How The Man of Steel Helps Us to Behold Jesus – The Real Superman by David P. Craig
On the road to Emmaus after Jesus rose from the dead He appears to His disciples and speaks of how all the Scriptures pointed to Himself: “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). Last night I went to see the movie “Man of Steel” about Superman with my wife and one of my daughters. We enjoyed the movie and afterward discussed some of the parallels between Superman and Jesus. The movie doesn’t purport to be a theologically accurate portrait of Jesus, but nevertheless it is rare occasion when you leave a movie thinking and talking about Jesus – and for that very reason alone this movie is very significant and worth seeing. This movie has been doing very well around the world – I think it’s because all of humanity longs for what Superman points us to – the real Superman – The Lord Jesus Christ. There’s probably more parallels than the ones we discussed, but here’s what we came up with:
(1) The first pointer is an ironic one. Jesus was born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14 cf. with Matthew 1:20). In the movie everyone on Krypton is conceived through a sterile process that does not involve sexual reproduction. Kal-El (Superman) is the first child born in many centuries of a natural birth. This is the opposite of the way it is between all humans and Christ – nevertheless Superman’s birth like Jesus’ is totally unique among his people.
(2) Superman like Jesus has a “Heavenly” Father and an adopted earthly father and mother. Jesus had always been with His Heavenly Father and then came to earth and was raised by his earthly father and mother – Joseph and Mary. Superman had a Father on Krypton – Jor-El (played by Russell Crowe) and came to earth and was raised by his adopted dad, Jonathan Kent (played by Kevin Costner).
(3) Throughout his life Superman is mocked, taunted, and even beaten by others and refuses to retaliate in words or actions. This reminds us of Jesus: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he oppened not his mouth”(Isaiah 53:7).
(4) Superman has tremendous powers as a child and refrains from using them accept to save others. Jesus came in total humility and lived in his human nature and refrained from using His omnipotent powers which reminds us of Philippians 2:3-5, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of us look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus.”
(5) Superman like Jesus has a “Heavenly” name (Kal-El) and a name given to him by his earthly parents (Clark). Jesus is called Immanuel “God with us” in Isaiah, and then Joseph and Mary are told to call Him Jesus “for He will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).
(6) Kal-El has to battle the vicious archenemy of humanity and the Kryptonites throughout the movie and ends up victorious just as Jesus was constantly attacked by Satan and was victorious. This reminds us of John 10:10, “The thief [Satan] comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I [Jesus] came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
(7) Superman keeps his identity hidden until it is time to fulfill his mission. Jesus also waited to accomplish His mission in the fullness of time: “But when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born or woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
(8) Kal-El (Superman) was sent to earth by his Father to save the world. Jesus was sent by His Heavenly Father to save the world – “For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and give His life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).
(9) Clark Kent gives himself up in a crucifix pose at the age of 33 and fulfills his mission for which he came to earth – the same age Jesus was when He was crucified on the cross.
(10) Superman was “cut-off” from his Father for the good of humanity. Just as Jesus was “forsaken” by His Heavenly Father for the salvation of humanity: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned–every one–to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:3-6).
Book Review by David P. Craig: “Mary Encounters the Resurrected Christ”
The First Christian is an exploration of the paradox that Christian faith is both impossible and irrational. Keller demonstrates how this paradox is true in light of the resurrection account as told by John in chapter 20 of his Gospel. In this essay by Keller we learn what true faith is about in the light of Jesus’ encounter with Mary Magdalene after his rising from the dead.
The impossibility of faith resides in the fact that all people are spiritually dead. Despite Jesus’ many references to his death and resurrection his disciples totally failed to recognize Jesus immediately after his rising from the grave. When Mary sees the empty tomb she immediately thought that Jesus’ body was stollen. The reality is that whether in the first or twenty first century belief in the resurrection of Christ doesn’t come naturally to anyone. All theological traditions agree that we can’t produce saving faith in Jesus solely through our own ability. The reality is that saving faith is impossible without the supernatural intervention of God Himself. Therefore in the first section of this essay Keller explores our natural skepticism and how to deal with our doubts.
In the second half of the essay Keller shows how rational biblical faith is. The faith of the first Christians was the result of a personal encounter with Jesus – based on objective evidence. During the time of Christ (much like in today’s skeptical climate) Jews, Greeks, and Romans all denied the possibility of a physical resurrection. Salvation was primarily viewed as the liberation of the soul from the body. Keller explores several of the reasons why the disciples were initially so skeptical of the resurrected Jesus. The disciples were no more expecting a bodily resurrection of Christ than people in the twenty-first century are.
Keller goes on to show the evidence required of a skeptic (whether back then or now) to actually believe in a resurrected Christ. He gives a compelling argument for the literal bodily resurrection of Christ and how it objectively provides the evidence necessary for a cogent faith.
Tim states it this way, “What kind of evidence would you need in order to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, resurrected from the dead? Whatever that evidence is, you can reasonably conclude that they must have had something like it. And if that’s so, the evidence that convinced them and brought them to faith might be enough to convince you too.”
In this essay Keller provides the skeptic with much food for thought in giving a convincing argument for why faith in Jesus leads to salvation, and fortifies the existing faith of the Christian giving him or her rational reasons for why faith in Christ makes sense in this life, and the one to come.
1.1 We believe that the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.
1.2 We believe that God’s intentions, revealed in the Bible, are the supreme and final authority in testing all claims about what is true and what is right. In matters not addressed by the Bible, what is true and right is assessed by criteria consistent with the teachings of Scripture.
1.3 We believe God’s intentions are revealed through the intentions of inspired human authors, even when the authors’ intention was to express divine meaning of which they were not fully aware, as, for example, in the case of some Old Testament prophecies. Thus the meaning of Biblical texts is a fixed historical reality, rooted in the historical, unchangeable intentions of its divine and human authors. However, while meaning does not change, the application of that meaning may change in various situations. Nevertheless it is not legitimate to infer a meaning from a Biblical text that is not demonstrably carried by the words which God inspired.
1.4 Therefore, the process of discovering the intention of God in the Bible (which is its fullest meaning) is a humble and careful effort to find in the language of Scripture what the human authors intended to communicate. Limited abilities, traditional biases, personal sin, and cultural assumptions often obscure Biblical texts. Therefore the work of the Holy Spirit is essential for right understanding of the Bible, and prayer for His assistance belongs to a proper effort to understand and apply God’s Word.
Why Does this matter?
1. Many in our day deny the existence of Truth.
Michael Novak (First Things, Sept. 1994, p. 21) Templeton Prize Address
“There is no such thing as truth,” they teach even the little ones. “Truth is bondage. Believe what seems right to you. There are as many truths as there are individuals. Follow your feelings. Do as you please. Get in touch with yourself. Do what feels comfortable.” Those who speak this way prepare the jails of the twenty-first century. They do the work of tyrants.
Once truth is removed as the arbiter between two groups all that is left is power.
2. One trait of secularism is the criticism of the Bible as a mixture of truth and error.
Star Tribune, Oct. 17, 1992 Letter from Minnesota Atheists
One of the few worthwhile statements in the Bible is, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. . . . Knowledge of the Bible is hindered by the informal censorship imposed by religious leaders who would rather their followers didn’t know what‘s in it—the innumerable contradictions, historical errors, plagiarism, absurdities, meaningless prophecies, myths presented as historical fact, and countless instances of divinely ordered or approved atrocities. . . . It is true that the Bible has some worthwhile material, including entertaining stories, inspirational sentiments and astute observations about human behavior. However, those worthwhile parts could probably be contained in a pamphlet.
3. The competing holy books of other religions are coming increasingly close.
As holy books come near, your own can become relativized and you need to know how you feel about that.
4. One trait of liberal Christianity is the rejection of the infallibility of the Bible and the call to find a canon within the canon.
Ernst Kaesemann, quoted in Gerhard Maier, The End of the Historical Method, (St. Louis: Concordia Pub. House, 1974).
The Scripture which one gives over to itself and to which one . . . gives himself up uncritically without the “principal key” leads not only to a multiplicity of confessions but also to the inability to distinguish between faith and superstition, the Father of Jesus Christ and the idol . . . . Does the New Testament canon establish the unity of the church? . . . No . . . If (the formal canon) establishes also a variety of Christologies which are in part incompatible . . . the canon as such also legitimates more or less all sects and false doctrines (pp. 37-38).
It was common when I was in school to hear things like, “The New Tesament is not the basis of the unity of the church; it is the basis of the disunity of the church,” meaning there are distinct theologies taught in the Bible and you need to pick which will be yours.
5. In every generation there are new creative attacks on the trustworthiness of the Bible.
In our day, Bart Ehrman probably leads the pack in trying to discredit the reliability of the biblical text. His claim is that the New Testament has been corrupted by copyists so badly it can’t be recovered.
Ehrman and others have also argued that there are other gospels besides our own that show alternative Christianities that are as valid as the traditional one.
6. If it is true, the message of the Bible is the only message of eternal life.
For all the gods of the peoples are idols, But the LORD made the heavens. (Psalm 96:5)
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” (John 14:6)
Jesus said therefore to the twelve, “You do not want to go away also, do you?” Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life.” (John 6:67-68)
And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12)
Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. (1 John 2:23)
He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life. (1 John 5:12)
The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. (Luke 10:16)
7. Building our lives of sacrificial service on a mistake would be pitiable.
It would be tragic to construct our lives around the Bible and then discover the gospel was false.
If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:19)
8. The Bible makes claims to inspiration and authority and inerrancy.
From childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3:15-16)
If it is foolish to build your ministry on the Bible and discover it is not true, it would be even more foolish to not build your ministry on it and find out it is true. If you believe it is true, how could you devote your ministry to doing anything less than explaining and applying this book?
Why do I trust this Bible?
Assumption #1: It is a good idea to ask why trust the Bible and not just to do it gullibly.
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)
And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This Jesus, whom I proclaim to you, is the Christ.” (Acts 17:2-3)
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. (1 John 5:13)
He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)
Assumption #2: Scholarly defenses of the Scriptures are important for the church, but are not the sure foundation of anyone’s spiritual confidence in the Bible.
That is true for a statistical reason and for a Biblical one:
Statistically, almost no one can restate the arguments when the lecture is over.
Biblically, the basis of our confidence in God’s word is the spiritual sight of the glory of God in Christ in the gospel, not the mere historical argumentation.
I want to offer a way of knowing and trusting the Bible that is open to all who have access to the Bible, not just historians.
By a reasonable conviction, I mean a conviction founded on real evidence, or upon that which is a good reason, or just ground of conviction.
Where does this evidence come from?
The gospel of the blessed God does not go abroad a begging for its evidence, so much as some think
Specifically,
the mind ascends to the truth of the gospel but by one step, and that is its divine glory…. Unless men may come to a reasonable solid persuasion and conviction of the truth of the gospel…by a sight of its glory; it is impossible that those who are illiterate, and unacquainted with history, should have any thorough and effectual conviction of it at all.
5 Reasons I Trust the Bible to Be the Word of God?
1. I have met Jesus in the gospel and his self-authenticating glory has won my admiration and my allegiance and my trust.
I met him in the Gospel. What’s the Gospel?
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you–unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
The gospel is the story of Christ’s life and death for sinners according to the Scriptures and his resurrection and what it achieved and how it is enjoyed and what it leads to ultimately.
When this gospel story is recounted in sufficient fullness, the glory of Christ becomes the ground of or trust in it.
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. 4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. 6 For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 4:3-6)
Here the mind reaches certainty of Christ in the gospel by the self-authenticating glory that shines through.
Nothing can be more evident, than that a saving belief of the gospel is here spoken of by the apostle, as arising from the mind being enlightened to behold the divine glory of the things it exhibits.
In other words, the “real evidence” or “just ground” on which saving faith must rest is the Glory of God manifest in the gospel.
God grants us to see “light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” There is a spiritual light and it is a real knowledge. It has a real basis, just as the shining of a light is a real basis for seeing the light, though the blind may deny that there is any such thing.
This is the new birth: the opening of the eyes of the blind to see what is really there. This eye-opening removal of blindness and deadness comes by the word of God.
Since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable,through the living and abiding word of God; . . . And this word is the good news that was preached to you. (1 Peter 1:23, 25)
Picture the dead and blind heart. Christ and the cross and sin are boring and foolish and a stumbling block. Then the word of God, the gospel comes empowered by the Spirit and touches the heart. It awakens to see the very thing that the word carries, the news about Jesus Christ.
2. Paul’s witness to Jesus wins my trust.
I turn to Paul as a contemporary witness to Jesus who more than any other witness in the New Testament let’s us see into his own soul and ministry. I do this because I when I need to credit someone I need to know him. Paul’s witness to Jesus wins my trust. He does not sound like a lunatic or a liar. His story rings true. It coheres with the self-authenticating Christ that I met in the gospel.
Paul saw himself as an apostle with authority equal to the Twelve’s.
Paul, an apostle, not sent from men, nor through the agency of man, but through Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead. (Galatians 1:1)
And it came about that as he journeyed, he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him; 4 and he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” 5 And he said, “Who art Thou, Lord?” And He said, “I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, 6 but rise, and enter the city, and it shall be told you what you must do.” (Acts 9:3-6)
Paul saw his message as taught by the risen Christ and absolute.
For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12 For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. (Galatians 1:11-12)
Paul assumed the right as an apostle to command the churches.
Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep aloof from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us. (2 Thessalonians 3:6)
So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouthor by letter from us. (2 Thessalonians 2:15)
The Lord gave him his authority for building up the churches.
For even if I should boast somewhat further about our authority, which the Lord gave for building you up and not for destroying you, I shall not be put to shame. (2 Corinthians 10:8)
For this reason I am writing these things while absent, in order that when present I may not use severity, in accordance with the authority which the Lord gave me, for building up and not for tearing down. (2 Corinthians 13:10)
Paul sees his preached word as God’s word.
And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the word of God’s message, you accepted it not as the word of men, but forwhat it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe. (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
Paul sees himself as a true apostle over against the “false apostles” (2 Cor. 11:13).
For in no respect was I inferior to the most eminent apostles, even though I am a nobody. 12 The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles. (2 Corinthians 12:11-12)
Paul’s authority put him above all professed prophets of his day.
If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord’s commandment. 38 But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. (1 Corinthians 14:37-38)
Paul believed his words were “taught by the Spirit.”
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, 13 which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual people.14 But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised. (1 Corinthians 2:12-14)
Peter teaches that Paul’s apostolic writings are Scripture like the Old Testament.
Regard the patience of our Lord to be salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to understand, which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16)
3. Christ believed in the inspiration of the Old Testament.
With my knowledge of Christ and his will and his vision of the world expanded by the witness of Paul I turn to the gospels to listen to their witness to Christ and to hear his own words in their witness, and I find there the same self-authenticating Christ who won my allegiance in the gospel and in Paul. And I find that this Christ vindicated his own life and ministry on the basis of the truth and authority of the Old Testament. So through him I yield to the inspiration of the Old Testament and approach it with my heart open to hear God through it.
Jesus believed the Psalmist spoke by the Holy Spirit.
And Jesus answering began to say, as He taught in the temple, “How is it that the scribes say that the Christ is the son of David? 36 David himself said in the Holy Spirit, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies beneath your feet.”’” (Mark 12:35)
Jesus believed that what Moses wrote in the law God himself said.
And some Pharisees came to Him, testing Him, and saying, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?” 4 And He answered and said, “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 “Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” (Matthew 19:3-6)
And the man said, “This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.” 24 For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:23)
Jesus believed that all Scripture would be fulfilled.
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. 18 “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished. (Matthew 5:17-18)
Jesus believed that the small affirmations of Scripture cannot be broken
The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are Gods’? 35 “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), 36 do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? (John 10:33-36)
Jesus taught that Moses’ writings are to be believed.
“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote of Me. 47 “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?” (John 5:46)
Jesus devoted his life to fulfilling the Scriptures about the Messiah.
Face set toward Jerusalem
And He took the twelve aside and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all things which are written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished. (Luke 18:31)
Cleansing of the temple
“Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ den.” (Mark 11:15-17, compare to Isaiah 56:7)
His ministry is fulfillment of the Old Testament.
And He came to Nazareth. . . . 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim the release of the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are downtrodden, 19 to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” 20 And He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed upon Him. 21 And He began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” (Luke 4:16-21)
The ministry of Jesus and John the Baptist are being played out according to Scripture.
And they asked Him, saying, “Why is it that the scribes say that Elijah must come first?” 12 And He said to them, “Elijah does first come and restore all things. And yet how is it written of the Son of Man that He should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? 13 “But I say to you, that Elijah has indeed come, and they did to him whatever they wished, just as it is written of him.” (Mark 9:11-13)
Jesus saw his betrayal as fulfillment of Scripture.
“For the Son of Man is togo, just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.” (Mark 14:21)
“I do not speak of all of you. I know the ones I have chosen; but it is that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’” (John 3:18)
Jesus saw the disciples abandonment as fulfillment of Scripture.
And Jesus said to them, “You will all fall away, because it is written, ‘I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.’” (Mark 14:27)
Jesus saw his arrest as a criminal as fulfillment of Scripture.
“For I tell you, that this which is written must be fulfilled in Me, ‘And he who was numbered with the transgressors’; for that which refers to Me has its fulfillment.”(Luke 22:37)
“Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once put at My disposal more than twelve legions of angels? 54 How then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must happen this way?” (Matthew 26:53)
Jesus taught that we should not be slow to believe all that the Old Testament prophets have spoken: Luke 24:25
And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
The Holy Spirit attests to the Scriptures’ validity through the Scriptures themselves.
The last two reasons I trust the Bible is the word of God come from the Westminster Larger Catechism:
Question Four: How doth it appear that the Scriptures are the word of God?
Answer: The Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God, by their majesty(1) and purity(2); by the consent of all the parts(3), and the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God(4); by their light and power to convince and convert sinners, to comfort and build up believers unto salvation.(5) But the Spirit of God, bearing witness by and with the Scriptures in the heart of man, is alone able fully to persuade it that they are the very word of God.(6)
4. What is “the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God”?
So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. 17 If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. 18 The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. (John 7:16-18)
I do not receive glory from men; 42 but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. 43 “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another shall come in his own name, you will receive him. 44 “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another, and you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? (John 5:41-44)
From Genesis to Revelation the thrust of the Bible is that God gets the glory, we don’t. “The scope of the whole” is about getting God glory.
And “the scope of the whole” includes natural revelation. My existence in the world confronts me as soon as I am conscious of it with:
A Single Originator of all that is.
One who is totally self-sufficient with no dependence on anything outside himself to be all that he is.
One without beginning or ending or progress from worse to better, and therefore absolute and perfect.
One on whom I am dependent moment by moment for all things, none of which I deserve, and who is therefore beneficent.
One who is Personal and accounts for transcendent personhood in human beings.
One who accounts for the intelligent design manifest in the macro (galaxies) and micro (molecules and cells) universe.
One who knows all.
One who deserves to be reverenced and admired and looked to for guidance and help.
One who sees me as guilty for failure in not rendering him what he deserves, and who thus gives ultimate explanation to universal bad conscience.
One who might save me, but would need to do it in a way that overcomes my evil impulse to resist him, and would have to make a way for his honor to be sustained while not punishing me for treason.
There is implicit in our personhood, our conscience, our dependence, and our guilt that God is a personal Being, with moral expectations, whom we have dishonored, and from whom we deserve wrath.
What’s the point of all this in relation to the Westminster Catechism’s question four about how the Scriptures “manifest themselves to be the word of God”?
When the answer says that the Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God “by the scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God,” it is linking up with something in us that we know immediately from our own created existence in the world (unless we supress it as Romans 1:18) — that all glory belongs to God not us, and that we are guilty before him for not giving him this glory, and that the only hope of salvation will be by the initiative of this God to preserve his glory while finding away to forgive our sins.
This is in fact what we find in the whole Bible — the centrality of the glory of God and a history of salvation that makes his glory the center and goal of all things.
Therefore, this is one way that the Scriptures manifest themselves to be the word of God — they present a vision of God and man and salvation that fits with what we know immediately from God’s self-revelation in nature and in our own personhood and conscience.
5. How is the Holy Spirit “able fully to persuade [the heart of man] that [the Scriptures] are the very word of God?
John Calvin on the internal testimony of the Spirit and the problem with relying on the church to decide what is the Word of God:
“A most pernicious error widely prevails that Scripture has only so much weight as is conceded to it by the consent of the church. As if the eternal and inviolable truth of God depended upon the decision of men! . . . Yet, if this is so, what will happen to miserable consciences seeking firm assurance of eternal life if all promises of it consist in and depend solely upon the judgment of men?” (Institutes, I, vii, 1)
The immediate sight of God’s reality in the Word:
“How can we be assured that this has sprung from God unless we have recourse to the decree of the church? — it is as if someone asked: Whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Indeed,Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” (Institutes, I, vii, 2)
How then shall we know? The inward testimony of the Spirit.
“The testimony of the Spirit is more excellent than all reason. For as God alone is a fit witness of himself in his word, the Word will not find acceptance in men’s hearts before it is sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit therefore who has spoken through the mouths of the prophets must penetrate into our hearts to persuade us that they faithfully proclaimed what had been divinely commanded . . . because until he illumines their minds, they ever waver among many doubts!” (Institutes, I, vii, 4)
Life is the witness to the truth and power of the word.
7 And it is the Spirit who bears witness, because the Spirit is the truth. . . . 9 If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for the witness of God is this, that He has borne witness concerning His Son. 10 The one who believes in the Son of God has the witness in himself; the one who does not believe God has made Him a liar, because he has not believed in the witness that God has borne concerning His Son. 11 And the witness is this, that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. (1 John 5:7-11.)
J. I. Packer’s interpretation of Calvin’s thoughts on the inward witness of the Spirit
“Calvin affirms Scripture to be self-authenticating through the inner witness of the Holy Spirit. What is this ‘inner witness’? Not a special quality of experience, nor a new, private revelation, nor an existential ‘decision’, but a work of enlightenment whereby, through the medium of verbal testimony, the blind eyes of the spirit are opened, and divine realities come to be recognized and embraced for what they are. This recognition Calvin says, is as immediate and unanalysable as the perceiving of a color, or a taste, by physical sense—an event about which no more can be said than that when appropriate stimuli were present it happened, and when it happened we knew it had happened.” (Packer, 166)
Or to use the words of Jesus, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27)
Booklet Review By David P. Craig: Jesus Knows How To Party!
The Wedding Party is the fourth essay in the Encounters with Jesus Series – based on several lectures given to students by Tim Keller at Oxford Town Hall, London, in 2012. In the previous three essays Keller has tackled some of the most important questions one can ever ask. In this essay Keller tackles the question: “What did Jesus come to do?” He answers this question by giving us an exposition of Jesus’ first recorded miracle, or sign at a wedding feast in Cana as recorded in chapter two of the Gospel of John.
The miracle of Jesus’ turning water into wine was ultimately a symbol or a signifier of something greater to come. Keller masterfully gives three future signs that Jesus’ miracle at the wedding banquet point to. There are three symbols or types in this wedding encounter that all ultimately point to our future with Christ. This story is a picture of how Jesus enjoyed the joy at the wedding feast by providing more wine, and yet how He became our substitute on the cross by receiving the cup of God’s wrath that we deserve so that we can one day receive the coming joy provided by Him.
Keller unfolds the big story of all of the Scriptures in this one story from John 2. He shows our need to be reconciled to God, how Jesus provides what we need, and how Jesus is the provider of the feast that we all ultimately long for. We can face anything in life knowing what awaits us at the Lamb’s party that is to come in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Answer to Objection #2 To Christianity: “All Religions Are Good. It Doesn’t Matter What You Believe.”
America is a melting pot. People from every conceivable ethnic and religious background come together to form one nation–e pluribus unum, from the many, one. At the heart of our national sense of unity stands the crucial principle of religious toleration. Under the principle of religious toleration, all religious systems are guaranteed freedom of expression and equal treatment under the law. No one religion has exclusive claim to legal rights and government establishment. The government of the United States of America expresses the will of the founding fathers that there will be no “established national religion.: Thus, we have no state church that enjoys exclusive privilege under the law.
With the principle of equal toleration has come the idea that no religion has exclusive claims to truth. Though the concept of legal religious toleration says nothing at all about the validity of truth claims, many have drawn the implication that equal toleration means equal validity. Thus, when Christians or advocates of any religion make claims of exclusivity, their claims are often met with shock or anger at such a narrow-minded posture. To make exclusive religious claims is to fly in the face of national sentiment. It is like attacking baseball, hot dogs, motherhood, and apple pie (not to mention Chevrolet).
In the sixties the uplifted index finger became a symbol not only of a number one ranking for a football team, but also a popular sign of the members of the “Jesus movement” that there is but “one way” to God, the way of Christ. The zeal of the Jesus People met great resistance and hostility at this point.
One of the most embarrassing moments I ever experienced came in a freshman class in college. it was a time of painful public humiliation. The professor was a former war correspondent who was outwardly hostile to Christianity. In the middle of a class she looked at me and said, “Mr. Sproul, do you believe that Jesus is the only way to God?” I gasped as I felt the weight of he question and knew that every eye in the room was on me. My mind raced for a way to escape my dilemma. I knew that if I said yes people would be angry. At the same time, I knew that if I said no I would be betraying Christ. Finally, I mumbled almost inaudibly, “Yes, I do.” The teacher responded with unmitigated fury. She said in front of the whole class, “That’s the most narrow-minded, bigoted, and arrogant statement I have ever heard. You must be a supreme egotist to believe your way of religion is the only way.” I made no reply but slouched rather meekly in my chair.
After the class was dismissed, I went to speak with my teacher privately. In the conversation I tried to explain to her why I believed that Christ was the only way. I asked her if she thought it was at least theoretically possible that Christ be one way to God. She allowed the possibility. I asked if she thought it were possible that without being narrow-minded or bigoted a person could come to the belief that Jesus was God. Though she did not believe in the deity of Christ, she recognized that people could, in fact, believe that without being bigoted. Then I explained to her that the reason I believed that Christ was the only way because Jesus Himself taught that.
I reminded her that Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me”(John 14:6). I also pointed out that the New Testament refers to Christ as the “only-begotten”of the Father, and that “there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). I said to her, “Can you see that I am torn between my loyalty to Christ and the modern spirit of pluralism?” I said, “Do you see that it is possible for me to believe in the uniqueness of Christ because He taught it? If I believed Christ was the only way because I believe that my way must be the only way because it is my way, that would be an act of arrogance and egotism.” She finally acknowledged that it was possible for someone to believe in the uniqueness of Christ without being arrogant and apologized sincerely to me. However, she went on to raise a more serious question than the question of my arrogance. She said, “How can you believe in a God who only allows one way to Himself?” Isn’t it narrow-minded of God to restrict redemption to one Savior and one faith?”
Aren’t All Religions Basically the Same?
In the final analysis this is the issue that must be faced: Is God so narrow-minded that He provides only one way of redemption?
Part of the reason we struggle so deeply with a question like this is due to the impact of the results of the nineteenth century approach to the study of comparative religion. In the nineteenth century there was a concerted effort by scholars to examine closely the distinctive characteristics of the major religions of the world. The “buzz word” of the day was “essence.” Many serious studies of religion were published which contained titles like The Essence of Religion or The Essence of Christianity. These books reflected an attempt to get at the basic core of religious truth that was found in all religion.
Religion was often reduced to its lowest common denominator. Frequently the distilled essence of religion was pinpointed by the phrase “the universal fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man.” Thus it was seen that at the heart, all religions were working for the same thing. The outward trappings of religious belief and practice differed from culture to culture but at the root their goals were the same. Thus, if all religions were essentially the same then no one of them could ever make exclusive claims to validity.
Out of this quest for the essence of religion came the now famous and popular “mountain analogy.” The mountain analogy pictures God at the peak of the mountain with man down at the base. The story of religion is the account of man’s effort to move from the base of the mountain to the peak of fellowship and communion with God. The mountain has many roads. Some of the roads go up the mountain by a very direct route. Other roads go up the mountain in a circuitous fashion, but eventually reach the top. Thus, according to the proponents of this analogy, all religious roads, though they differ in route, ultimately arrive at the same place.
Out of this conviction that all roads lead to God has come a considerable number of ecumenical movements, pan-religious endeavors, and even new religions such as Bahai which seek a total synthesis and amalgamation of all the world religions into one new unified religion.
I once had a conversation with a Bahai priest. He told me that all religions were equally valid. I began to interrogate him concerning the points of conflict that exist between islam and Buddhism, between Confucianism and Judaism, and between Christianity and Taoism. The man responded by saying that he didn’t know anything about Islam, Judaism, or the rest but that he did know they were all the same. I wondered aloud how anyone could assert that all religions were the same when he had no knowledge of what those religions professed or denied/ How can Buddhism be true when it denies the existence of a personal God and at the same time Christianity be true when it affirms the existence of a personal God? Can there be a personal God and not be a personal God at the same time and in the same relationship? Can Orthodox Judaism be right when it denies life after death and Christianity be equally right when it affirms life after death? Can classical Islam have a valid ethic that endorses the killing of infidels while at the same time the Christian ethic of loving your enemies be equally valid?
There are only two possible ways to maintain the equal validity of all religions. One is by ignoring the clear contradictions between them by a flight into irrationality; the other is by assigning these contradictions to the level of insignificant nonessentials. The latter approach involves us in a systematic process of reductionism. Reductionism strips each religion of elements considered vital by the adherents of the religion themselves and reduces the religion to its lowest common denominator. The distinctives of each religion are obscured and watered down to accommodate religious peace.
Why does this kind of reductionism take place? Perhaps there are many motivating factors for it. Certainly one of the most powerful factors is the desire to end religious controversies and the upheaval they bring. Differences in religious conviction have led again and again to passionate disputes between people, family alienation, violent forms of religious persecution, and in many cases even war. Thus if we were able to achieve a universal religious essence perhaps we can end these very costly disputes. The goal is peace. The price is truth.
if religion deals with matters of ultimate concern, there is little wonder that religious debates produce so much passion. But if we are interested in truth we can never discover it by denying real differences of truth claims. The peace that is produced by reductionism is a false and carnal peace. We recall the false prophets of Israel who, in their desperate attempts to avoid conflict, cried, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace. Jeremiah’s lament remains relevant, “These men heal the wounds of the daughters of Zion, slightly” (see Jeremiah 11).
It is one thing to seek an atmosphere of religious debate that is characterized by charity. It is quite another thing to say the matters under debate are not important. It is one thing to protect the right of every religious person to follow the dictates of his conscience without fear of persecution; it is another to say that opposing convictions are both true. We must note the difference between equal toleration under the law and equal validity according to truth.
Why is God So Narrow-MInded?
We are still left with a problem, however, of a narrow-minded God who provides only one way of redemption. Does this not mean that people who live in a culture where that one religion is proclaimed have a decisive advantage over people living in other cultures? Let’s examine the deeper question of the narrow-mindedness of God who provides only one way of redemption.
We remember the words of Jesus when he said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few( Matthew 7:13-14).”
What kind of a God would have such a narrow gate? The question implies a serious accusation; that God has not done enough to provide redemption for mankind. Let us examine the accusation from a hypothetical perspective. Let us suppose that there is a God who is altogether holy and righteous. Suppose that God freely creates mankind and gives to mankind the gift of life.
Suppose He sets His creatures in an ideal setting and gives them the freedom to participate in all of the glories of the created order with freedom. Suppose, however, that God imposes one small restriction upon them, warning them that if they violate that restriction, they will die. Would such a God have the right to impose such a restriction with the penalty of forfeiture of the gift of life if His authority is violated?
Suppose that for no just cause the ungrateful creatures disobeyed the restriction the moment God’s back was turned. Suppose when He discovered their violation instead of killing them, He redeemed them. Suppose the descendents of the first transgressors broadly and widely increased their disobedience and hostility toward their creator to the point that the whole world became rebellious to God, and each person in it, “did what was right in his own eyes” (Judg. 21:25).
Suppose God still determined to redeem these people and freely gave special gifts to one nation of people in order that, through them, the whole world would be blessed. Suppose God delivered this people from poverty and enslavement to a ruthless Egyptian Pharoah. Suppose this privileged nation, as soon as it was liberated, rose up in further rebellion against their God and their liberator. Suppose they took His law and violated it consistently.
Suppose that God, still intent upon redemption, sent specially endowed messengers or prophets to plead with His people to return to Him. Suppose the people killed the divine messengers and mocked their message. Suppose the people then began to worship idols of stone and things fashioned by their own hands. Suppose these people invented religions that were contrary to the real God and worshiped creatures rather than the Creator.
Suppose in an ultimate act of redemption God Himself became incarnate in the person of His Son. Suppose this Son came into the world not to condemn the world, but to redeem the world. But suppose this Son of God were rejected, slandered, mocked, tortured, and murdered. Yet, suppose that God accepted the murder of His own Son as punishment for the sins of the very persons who murdered Him.
Suppose this God offered to His Son’s murderers total amnesty, complete forgiveness, transcendent peace that comes with the cleansing of all guilt, victory over death and an eternal life of complete felicity.
Suppose God gave these people as a free gift the promise of a future life that would be without pain, without sickness, without death, and without tears. Suppose that God said to these people, “There is one thing that I demand. I demand that you honor my only-begotten Son and that you worship and serve Him alone.” Suppose God did all of that, would you be willing to say to Him, “God, that’s not fair, you haven’t done enough”?
If man has in fact committed cosmic treason against God, what reason could we possibly have that God should provide any way of redemption? In light of the universal rebellion against God, the issue is not why is there only one way, but why is there any way at all? I know of no way of answering that question.
Why Do Christians Say that Christ is God Incarnate?
At the heart of Christianity stands the person and work of Jesus Christ. His person and work are part of the essence of Christianity. It is in who He is and what He has done that the essence of Christianity can be discovered. Both in His person and work we find elements of utter uniqueness. The Christian claim is that in the person of Jesus of Nazareth we meet God incarnate. Buddha never claimed to be anything more than a man. Mohammed never claimed to be anything more than a prophet. Moses and Confucius were mortals. If Christ was in fact God incarnate, then it is a travesty of justice to ascribe equal honor to Him and to the others. To do so would necessitate either falsely attributing to mortal man the attributes of deity or stripping Christ of His divine nature.
In the truth claims of Christianity we find the notion of the sinlessness of Christ. If Jesus was in fact without sin, this would put Him in a class by Himself. If He had no other uniqueness, this one factor would set Him apart from every religious leader the world has ever known. Though claiming something does not make it true, nevertheless the fact that Jesus claimed to be sinless is significant. By that claim the religious stakes are established. If the claim is true, then Jesus’ uniqueness is assured. If the claim is not true then Jesus fails to qualify as even one of many great religious teachers. He would only qualify as a hypocrite and a charlatan.
The claim of resurrection is vital to Christianity. If Christ has been raised from the dead by God, then He has the credentials and certification that no other religious leader possesses. Buddha is dead. Mohammed is dead. Moses is dead. Confucius is dead. But, according to the truth claim of Christianity, Christ is alive. If Christ has been vindicated by resurrection, His uniqueness as an object of religious devotion is established.
Another dimension of the uniqueness of Christ that is vital to Christianity is His work of atonement. Moses could mediate on the law; Mohammed could brandish a sword; Buddha could give personal counsel; Confucius could offer wise sayings; but none of these men was qualified to offer an atonement for the sins of the world.
It is not only the resurrection of Christ that makes Him unique but it is His death that puts Him in a class by Himself. His death was made as a payment for the sins of mankind. His sacrifice was perfect. Here we see the direct correlation between the uniqueness of His person, of His sinlessness, of His atoning death, and of His resurrection. Together these factors describe the only-begotten of the Father.
It is a mistake, indeed a fatal mistake, to assume that God is pleased by “religion.” The cliche that “it doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you are sincere” involves a devastating error. We can be sincerely wrong and miss the way of redemption offered by God. What we believe in makes an ultimate difference to our destiny. “Religion” can be a substitute for truth; a man-made system of distorting the revelation of God.
Christ alone is worthy of unlimited devotion and service. His total value sets Him apart from all pretenders to the throne. He alone is able to redeem. He alone is worthy of worship.
The exclusiveness of the Christian truth-claim must always rest on the uniqueness of Christ. Christians are not immune from arrogance and bigotry. Yet arrogance and bigotry have no ally in Christ. Christ’s critique of these evil practices is more severe than any critic of Christianity can muster. At the same time this one who is so critical of arrogance and bigotry calls us to a single-minded devotion to truth. He claims to be that truth.
Key Points To Remember:
Are all religions good? Does it matter what you believe?
(1) Religious toleration does not mean equal validity of truth. The problem of exclusive claims to truth are deeply rooted in our culture. We must keep in mind the difference between religious toleration as a matter of legal rights and the concept of equal validity of truth.
(2) Objective evidence, not arrogance, must be the basis for Christian truth- claims. Christians must guard against communicating a sense of arrogance about their convictions. The uniqueness of Christ must be established on the basis of objective evidence rather than by personal preference.
(3) All religions do not teach the same thing but differ at key points. Attempts to make all religions “basically the same” involves the serious problem of reductionism–reducing everything to a broad common denominator. Analogies such as the “mountain analogy” obscure the real and crucial differences between world religions.
(4) The uniqueness of Christ and His own exclusive claims are the heart of the issue. To understand that uniqueness we must understand the whole pattern of biblical history. If the biblical history is true, then we can never suppose that God “has not done enough” to provide for our redemption.
(5) In light of biblical history it is easy to see why there is only “one way.”
(6) In spite of the fact that the world has been in constant rebellion to Him, God has provided a way of redemption. The ultimate question of redemption is the question why God would bother to provide any way of redemption for us. The wonderful truth is that even though we don’t deserve it, in Christ “we have redemption through his blood…the forgiveness of sins…according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).
About the Author:
Dr. R.C. Sproul (Founder of Ligonier Ministries; Bible College and Seminary President and Professor; and Senior Minister at Saint Andrews in Sanford, Florida) is an amazingly gifted communicator. Whether he is teaching, preaching, or writing – he has the ability to make the complex easy to understand and apply. He has been used more than any other person in my life to deepen my walk with Christ and help me to be more God-centered than man-centered. His book the Holiness of God has been the most influential book in my life – outside of the Bible. The article above is adapted from Chapter Two in another one of his excellent books: Reason to Believe. Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1982 (It was originally entitled: Objections Answered, 1978).
An Insider and and Outsider Encounter Jesus: Review By David P. Craig
This booklet is the second in a series of essays based on lectures to students given by Dr. Tim Keller in Oxford, England in 2012. This essay is based on an exposition of two stories in John chapters 3 and 4 where Keller addresses the question ‘What is wrong with the world the way it is?” The reason that Keller addresses this question is that the solutions to the worlds greatest problems cannot be solved, or solutions prescribed without a proper diagnosis at the outset.
In John chapter 3 the focus is on Nicodemus – a religious insider – a highly reputable and moral leader of the religious establishment. In John chapter 4 the focus is on the Samaritan woman – a religious outsider – socially and morally reprehensible in that culture. Instead of dealing with these individuals separately, Keller makes the point that it is a mistake to deal with these two individuals apart from one another. These two encounters were meant to be contrasted by Jesus in order to show what the insider and outcast have in common. All people (including us moderns) have differences, but in the greater scheme of the human dilemma – we are all alike.
In examining these two encounters with Jesus, Keller reveals how John’s stories are relevant about the world we live in today, and how both “insiders” and “outsiders” are the problem. The problem back then with the world is the same problem we have today. It all comes down to the fact that we are all sinners. We either have a tendency to be self-righteous and smug in our works (the insider), or think there are too many barriers to bridge the gap between ourselves and the holiness of God (the outcast). Both individuals are spiritually dead and spiritually lost.
Keller compellingly reveals that the greatest problem in the 1st century and now in the 21st century is still the same. He defines sin thus, “Sin is looking to something else besides God for your salvation. It is putting yourself in the place of God, becoming your own savior and lord.” Both Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman are equal sinners in need of the grace of God. The good news is that the solution to mankind’s great problem is that satisfaction and peace that come from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Jesus came to die on the cross to give eternal peace, satisfaction, and hope to anyone who comes to Him in faith and repentance.
The good news for all of us is summarized by Keller in this manner, “It is because Jesus Christ experienced cosmic thirst on the cross that you and I can have our spiritual thirst satisfied. It is because he died that we can be born again. And he did it gladly. Seeing what he did and why he did it will turn away our hearts from the things that enslave us and toward him in worship. That is the gospel, and it is the same for skeptics, believers, insiders, outcasts, and everyone in between.”
Two Grieving Sisters Encounter the Vulnerable God: Book Review by David P. Craig
This booklet is the third in a series of essays based on some lectures that Tim Keller gave to students in Oxford, England at the Oxford Town Hall, England in 2012. This essay is an exposition of Jesus’ encounter with May and Martha and the death and resurrection of their brother Lazarus in John 11.
The encounters that Jesus has with Martha and Mary demonstrate both the supreme power of Jesus in His Divinity, and the humble humanity of Jesus in his weakness displayed in His grief over the death of Lazarus. Jesus is portrayed in this story as both fully God, and fully man simultaneously. Jesus gives Martha and Mary exactly what they need in their extreme loss over their brother – He is empathetic toward their suffering and suffers with them, and He is omnipotent and reveals His compassion in raising Lazarus from the dead.
Tim Keller shows in this short booklet why it was necessary for Jesus to take on flesh in order to save us. He needed to become powerless, and vulnerable in order to go to the cross to obtain our salvation. He writes, “The founders of every other major religion said, ‘I’m a prophet who shows you how to find God,’ but Jesus taught, ‘I’m God, come to find you.'”
We ultimately have no reason to despair because Jesus is the “resurrection and the life.” He is able to sympathize with our weaknesses because He became weak unto death, and He is able to grant us eternal life because He is able to raise the dead. What Keller drives home in this exposition of John 11 was how He loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus – but also how Jesus “became human, mortal, vulnerable, killable–all out of love for us.”
I would recommend this booklet especially for those who have lost loved ones, or are experiencing great suffering. Keller’s essay will give you hope in your grief and show you how to be comforted by the sacrificial love of Jesus. The gospel is powerful for believers to strengthen their faith, and for non-believers to begin their journey of faith. Tim Keller addresses the man or woman with faith, as well as the doubting and grieving with compassion, guidance, and compellingly presents how in the Lord Jesus Christ we can find our satisfaction and abundant joy.
O Christ our Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. As conies to their rock, so have we run to Thee for safety; as birds from their wanderings, so have we flown to Thee for peace. Chance and change are busy in our little world of nature and men, but in Thee we find no variableness nor shadow of turning. We rest in Thee without fear or doubt and face our tomorrows without anxiety. Amen.
The immutability of God is among those attributes less difficult to understand, but to grasp it we must discipline ourselves to sort out the usual thoughts with which we think of created things from the rarer ones that arise when we try to lay hold of whatever may be comprehended of God.
To say that God is immutable is to say that He never differs from Himself. The concept of a growing or developing God is not found in the Scriptures. It seems to me impossible to think of God as varying from Himself in any way. Here is why:
For a moral being to change it would be necessary that the change be in one of three directions. He must go from better to worse or from worse to better; or, granted that the moral quality remain stable, he must change within himself, as from immature to mature or from one order of being to another. It should be clear that God can move in none of these directions. His perfections forever rule out any such possibility.
God cannot change for the better. Since He is perfectly holy, He has never been less holy than He is now and can never be holier than He is and has always been. Neither can God change for the worse. Any deterioration within the unspeakably holy nature of God is impossible. Indeed I believe it impossible even to think of such a thing, for the moment we attempt to do so, the object about which we are thinking is no longer God but something else and someone less than He. The one of whom we are thinking may be a great and awesome creature, but because he is a creature he cannot be the self-existent Creator.
As there can be no mutation in the moral character of God, so there can be none within the divine essence. The being of God is unique in the only proper meaning of that word; that is, His being is other than and different from all other beings. We have seen how God differs from His creatures in being self-existent, self-sufficient, and eternal. By virtue of these attributes God is God and not some other being. One who can suffer any slightest degree of change is neither self-existent, self-sufficient, nor eternal, and so is not God.
Only a being composed of parts may change, for change is basically a shift in the relation of the parts of a whole or the admission of some foreign element into the original composition. Since God is self-existent, He is not composed. There are in Him no parts to be altered. And since He is self-sufficient, nothing can enter His being from without.
“Whatever is composed of parts,” says Anselm, “is not altogether one, but is in some sort plural, and diverse from itself; and either in fact or in concept is capable of dissolution. But these things are alien to Thee, than whom nothing better can be conceived of. Hence, there are no parts in Thee, Lord, nor art Thou more than one. But Thou art so truly a unitary being, and so identical with Thyself, that in no respect art Thou unlike Thyself; rather Thou art unity itself, indivisible by any conception.”
“All that God is He has always been, and all that He has been and is He will ever be.” Nothing that God has ever said about Himself will be modified; nothing the inspired prophets and apostles have said about Him will be rescinded. His immutability guarantees this.
The immutability of God appears in its most perfect beauty when viewed against the mutability of men. In God no change is possible; in men change is impossible to escape. Neither the man is fixed nor his world, but he and it are in constant flux. Each man appears for a little while to laugh and weep, to work and play, and then to go to make room for those who shall follow him in the never-ending cycle.
Certain poets have found a morbid pleasure in the law of impermanence and have sung in a minor key the song of perpetual change. Omar the tentmaker was one who sang with pathos and humor of mutation and mortality, the twin diseases that afflict mankind. “Don’t slap that clay around so roughly,” he exhorts the potter, “that may be your grandfather’s dust you make so free with.” “When you lift the cup to drink red wine,” he reminds the reveler, “you may be kissing the lips of some beauty dead long ago.”
This note of sweet sorrow expressed with gentle humor gives a radiant beauty to his quatrains but, however beautiful, the whole long poem is sick, sick unto death. Like the bird charmed by the serpent that would devour it, the poet is fascinated by the enemy that is destroying him and all men and every generation of men.
The sacred writers, too, face up to man’s mutability, but they are healthy men and there is a wholesome strength in their words. They have found the cure for the great sickness. God, they say, changes not. The law of mutation belongs to a fallen world, but God is immutable, and in Him men of faith find at last eternal permanence. In the meanwhile change works for the children of the kingdom, not against them. The changes that occur in them are wrought by the hand of the inliving Spirit. “But we all,” says the apostle, “with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things.
O Lord! my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee,
And wakes no echo in Thy mute Eternity.
—Frederick W. Faber
These words of Faber find sympathetic response in every heart; yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change. To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance: the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. So radical is this change that the apostle calls the man that used to be “the old man” and the man that now is “the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”
Yet the change is deeper and more basic than any external acts can reveal, for it includes also the reception of life of another and higher quality. The old man, even at his best, possesses only the life of Adam: the new man has the life of God. And this is more than a mere manner of speaking; it is quite literally true. When God infuses eternal life into the spirit of a man, the man becomes a member of a new and higher order of being.
In the working out of His redemptive processes the unchanging God makes full use of change and through a succession of changes arrives at permanence at last. In the Book of Hebrews this is shown most clearly. “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second,” is a kind of summation of the teaching of that remarkable book. The old covenant, as something provisional, was abolished, and the new and everlasting covenant took its place. The blood of goats and bulls lost its significance when the blood of the Paschal Lamb was shed. The law, the altar, the priesthood—all were temporary and subject to change; now the eternal law of God is engraven forever on the living, sensitive stuff of which the human soul is composed. The ancient sanctuary is no more, but the new sanctuary is eternal in the heavens and there the Son of God has His eternal priesthood.
Here we see that God uses change as a lowly servant to bless His redeemed household, but He Himself is outside of the law of mutation and is unaffected by any changes that occur in the universe.
And all things as they change proclaim
The Lord eternally the same.
—Charles Wesley
Again the question of use arises. “Of what use to me is the knowledge that God is immutable?” someone asks. “Is not the whole thing mere metaphysical speculation? Something that might bring a certain satisfaction to persons of a particular type of mind but can have no real significance for practical men?”
If by “practical men” we mean unbelievers engrossed in secular affairs and indifferent to the claims of Christ, the welfare of their own souls, or the interests of the world to come, then for them such a book as this can have no meaning at all; nor, unfortunately, can any other book that takes religion seriously. But while such men may be in the majority, they do not by any means compose the whole of the population. There are still the seven thousand who have not bowed their knees to Baal. These believe they were created to worship God and to enjoy His presence forever, and they are eager to learn all they can about the God with whom they expect to spend eternity.
In this world where men forget us, change their attitude toward us as their private interests dictate, and revise their opinion of us for the slightest cause, is it not a source of wondrous strength to know that the God with whom we have to do changes not? That His attitude toward us now is the same as it was in eternity past and will be in eternity to come?
What peace it brings to the Christian’s heart to realize that our Heavenly Father never differs from Himself. In coming to Him at any time we need not wonder whether we shall find Him in a receptive mood. He is always receptive to misery and need, as well as to love and faith. He does not keep office hours nor set aside periods when He will see no one. Neither does He change His mind about anything. Today, this moment, He feels toward His creatures, toward babies, toward the sick, the fallen, the sinful, exactly as He did when He sent His only-begotten Son into the world to die for mankind.
God never changes moods or cools off in His affections or loses enthusiasm. His attitude toward sin is now the same as it was when He drove out the sinful man from the eastward garden, and His attitude toward the sinner the same as when He stretched forth His hands and cried, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
God will not compromise and He need not be coaxed. He cannot be persuaded to alter His Word nor talked into answering selfish prayer. In all our efforts to find God, to please Him, to commune with Him, we should remember that all change must be on our part. “I am the Lord, I change not.” We have but to meet His clearly stated terms, bring our lives into accord with His revealed will, and His infinite power will become instantly operative toward us in the manner set forth through the gospel in the Scriptures of truth.
Fountain of being! Source of Good!
Immutable Thou dost remain!
Nor can the shadow of a change
Obscure the glories of Thy reign.
Earth may with all her powers dissolve,
If such the great Creator will;
But Thou for ever art the same,
I AM is Thy memorial still.
—From Walker’s Collection
Article adapted from Chapter 9 of A.W. Tozer’s classic book on the Attributes of God entitled: The Knowledge of the Holy. Harper, many reprints – most recently 2008.
About the Author. Aiden Wilson Tozer was born April 21, 1897, on a small farm among the spiny ridges of Western Pennsylvania. Within a few short years, Tozer, as he preferred to be called, would earn the reputation and title of a “20th-century prophet.”
Able to express his thoughts in a simple but forceful manner, Tozer combined the power of God and the power of words to nourish hungry souls, pierce human hearts, and draw earthbound minds toward God.
When he was 15 years old, Tozer’s family moved to Akron, Ohio. One afternoon as he walked home from his job at Goodyear, he overheard a street preacher say, “If you don’t know how to be saved . . . just call on God.” When he got home, he climbed the narrow stairs to the attic where, heeding the preacher’s advice, Tozer was launched into a lifelong pursuit of God.
In 1919, without formal education, Tozer was called to pastor a small storefront church in Nutter Fort, West Virginia. That humble beginning thrust him and his new wife Ada Cecelia Pfautz, into a 44-year ministry with The Christian and Missionary Alliance.
Thirty-one of those years were spent at Chicago’s Southside Alliance Church. The congregation, captivated by Tozer’s preaching, grew from 80 to 800.
In 1950 Tozer was elected editor of the Alliance Weekly now called Alliance Life. The circulation doubled almost immediately. In the first editorial dated June 3, 1950, he set the tone: “It will cost something to walk slow in the parade of the ages while excited men of time rush about confusing motion with progress. But it will pay in the long run and the true Christian is not much interested in anything short of that.”
Tozer’s forte was his prayer life which often found him walking the aisles of a sanctuary or lying face down on the floor. He noted, “As a man prays, so is he.” To him the worship of God was paramount in his life and ministry. “His preaching as well as his writings were but extensions of his prayer life,” comments Tozer biographer James L. Snyder. An earlier biographer noted, “He spent more time on his knees than at his desk.”
Tozer’s love for words also pervaded his family life. He quizzed his children on what they read and made up bedtime stories for them. “The thing I remember most about my father,” reflects his daughter Rebecca, “was those marvelous stories he would tell.”
Son Wendell, one of six boys born before the arrival of Rebecca, remembers that, “We all would rather be treated to the lilac switch by our mother than to have a talking-to by our dad.”
Tozer’s final years of ministry were spent at Avenue Road Church in Toronto, Canada. On May 12, 1963, his earthly pursuit of God ended when he died of a heart attack at age 66. In a small cemetery in Akron, Ohio, his tombstone bears this simple epitaph: “A Man of God.”
Some wonder why Tozer’s writings are as fresh today as when he was alive. It is because, as one friend commented, “He left the superficial, the obvious and the trivial for others to toss around. . . . [His] books reach deep into the heart.”
His humor, written and spoken, has been compared to that of Will Rogers–honest and homespun. Congregations could one moment be swept by gales of laughter and the next sit in a holy hush.
For almost 50 years, Tozer walked with God. Even though he is gone, he continues to speak, ministering to those who are eager to experience God. As someone put it, “This man makes you want to know and feel God.”
Nathanael Encounters the Divine Logos: Booklet Review By David P. Craig
This booklet is the first of a series of essays based on a series of talks that Tim Keller gave in Oxford, England at the Oxford Town Hall, England in 2012. Based on John Chapter One Keller gives a reasoned exposition of the passage with special attention given to Jesus’ encounter with Nathanael and walks us through his problem as a skeptic, his need as a skeptic, and the prescription for a skeptic.
Keller bridges the gap between the biblical text and the modern day skeptic and shows how Jesus as the Divine Logos is the only one that can truly meet the skeptics greatest problems and needs. In exchange Jesus offers the skeptic a purpose for living, and an eternal hope.
Central to the theme of the essay Keller articulates the essence of Christianity. All other religions focus on what you have to do – works. Christianity on the other hand is the exact opposite. Jesus Christ came to earth in order to do for us what we could never accomplish for ourselves – the perfect life required by the Law.
Keller writes, “But Christianity is not just for the strong; it’s for everyone, but especially for people who admit that, where it really counts, they’re weak. It is for people who have a particular kind of strength to admit that their flaws are not superficial, their heart is deeply disordered, and they are incapable of rectifying themselves. It is for those who can see they need Jesus dying on the cross, to put them right with God…The very genius of Christianity is that it’s not about ‘Here’s what you have to do to find God.’ Christianity is about God coming to earth in the form of Jesus Christ, dying on the cross, to find you…because of the depth of our sin, God came in the person of Jesus Christ to do what we could not do for ourselves, to save us.”
This short read is an excellent introduction to the gospel – the essence of Christianity. It is an open invitation for skeptics to be open enough to evaluate the claims of Jesus Christ from the Gospel of John and to respond to his offer of purpose and meaning in this life, and the offer of eternal life with Him in eternity.
To help identify the kind of shepherd who stimulates beauty, let’s look now at some marks of maturity for a pastor. These are goals to shoot for, a direction to move. Since pupils are to become like their teachers, they are really goals for all of us.
The Mark of an Expanding Faith
Faith is that God-given ability to take the promises of God out of mothballs and apply them to the challenges of everyday living. Men of faith dream God-sized dreams and then move out to transform those dreams into reality. God has said that without faith, it is impossible to please him (Hebrews 11:6). Pleasing him is believing him. Faith as belief is affirming who he is while faith as action is responsible behavior in the light of who he is and what he has promised.
Sometimes it is behavior which overcomes overwhelming odds. By faith men of God “conquered kingdoms … shut the mouths of lions … became powerful in battle”(11:33-34). More often it is a tenacious behavior which endures in the midst of intense struggle and personal loss. “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection”(11:35). Some accepted joyfully the seizure of their property because they knew they had a better and an eternal possession (10:34). Faith is not shrinking back, whether one faces opportunity or oppression. Our Lord warned against the leaven of the Sadducees (rationalism). Rationalism—eliminating the supernatural—becomes the great enemy of faith. The deceptive thing about the leaven of the Sadducees is its reasonableness. Rationalism is reasonable and safe. Faith often appears unreasonable and risky. It was both unreasonable and risky for Peter to attempt to walk on water. It was unreasonable for Noah to build a boat, for Abraham to expect a son, for Moses to abandon the prestige of Egypt, and for George Mueller to care for orphans. We must all grow in faith if we are to please him. Certainly we want to do that! The great faith chapter (Hebrews 11) gives us three clues for faith building.
1. Belief in the Invisible. These faith giants saw through the problems of the natural world to a supernatural Being. They saw him who is invisible (11:27). The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us to do the same: “Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith”(12:1-2). Our eyes must move from the waves to the Master of the waves, from the storm to the Savior, from the fire to the Father. Abraham left the familiar and went out into the unfamiliar, the new, the untested, the uncharted, because he saw that God was the architect and builder of his future (11:10). Cultivation of our relationship with him who is invisible is the first key for building faith.
2. Faith in What Has Been Promised. The heroes of faith not only saw him who was invisible, but they welcomed his promises from a distance (11:13). As we cultivate a relationship with God we are able to claim with assurance (faith) the promises which grow out of that relationship. Sarah was enabled to conceive because Abraham believed God would be faithful to what he had promised (11:11). He believed God was reliable. Our pastor must know both the person of God and the promises of God if he is to be a man of faith.
Two things hinder this process: 1) A lack of knowledge of the promises of God, and 2) a lack of faith in the person and character of God. Men and women of faith welcome the promises of God from a distance. That is, their major expectations are in the future, in life beyond the veil. Moses claimed the promises of God and turned his back on the prestige, power, and wealth of Egypt because “he was looking ahead to his reward”(11:26). Others joyfully accepted the confiscation of their property knowing that they had “better and lasting possessions”(10:34). They will be winners; they will not be ashamed for the choices they made because God is faithful, his promises are true, and “he has prepared a city for them” (11:16). An expanding faith must be marked by confidence in God’s promises.
3. Living a Faith Life Style. A real winner feels the gold medal around his neck before he enters the race. So should the pastor. He should run to win, and motivate by his courageous example a multitude to run with him. The promises of God should be the fabric of his future. Faith begins with the person of God, moves to his promises, and then to a pattern for living. Ours is a living faith and a faith to be lived.
There is a faith life style summed up in Hebrews 11:13: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.” And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.
Pastors of all people must make this confession. It is the Magna Carta of Christian living. These heroes of the faith abandoned any hope of ultimate fulfillment in this life. They determined to ever be foreigners in their own countries, to live as aliens in their own land.
No city on this earth, no geographical location, no second home in the mountains has foundations which will last. We should abandon all hope of being satisfied and fulfilled with what is temporal. Our heartache is eternal, and no temporal bicarbonate will ease it. Nothing less than seeing Jesus face to face and dwelling in his presence will ever satisfy our deep longing. It’s a longing for home, and this world will never be our home.
Much of the Christian community acts as though this world is its home. Materialism is rampant. We have followed the gospel of the worldling who hopes that by doubling the cost of his new home he can double his happiness. This perverted gospel cripples the impact of countless Christians. The visible mark of faith is an alignment with an eternal home which creates an attitude and life style marked by its contrast with the secularism of our day. This alignment refocuses everything else. It changes our goals and objectives. It redirects our gifts and abilities and resources. It redefines our mission. Suddenly eternity with the Lord is everything, and his purposes become critical as we prepare for that great day. The “alien and stranger” lives for the possibility of hearing his Master say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” Like Moses, he looks forward to the reward.
Pastors must be examples to the church of total stewardship. They should richly enjoy all that God has given, but their heavenly citizenship should be obvious. The deceitfulness of wealth, of any treasure but God himself, is a dangerous time bomb. Some pastors err in the other direction. They parade their poverty and continually let their needs be known, and then praise God for his wonderful provision. Be careful, and pray for balance.
Faith is the essential ingredient that pleases God. Faith is fueled as the pastor cultivates the presence of God. As D. L. Moody used to say, “I am a leaky vessel, and I need to keep under the tap.” Faith is freed as the pastor develops confidence in the promises of God. It is properly focused as he adopts God’s pattern of living. The man of faith is an alien sent by God as an agent of reconciliation. An ad in a secular magazine stated, “Once you discover you can change the world you’ll never be the same.” How true! Faith moves mountains.
The Marks of a Positive Ministry
Faith and hope are inseparable friends. The gospel itself is literally “good news.” A pastor should both be and communicate good news. It’s largely a matter of attitude. Many pastors gravitate toward a negative, critical, condemning pattern of life and ministry. Such a life style is not from God.
It is often thought that the Christian faith is a deprivation of joy in living, or that it is a mere pattern of religious observances, or that it is a hairsplitting system of beliefs. Christianity does involve some of these elements but they are only incidental. The modern evangelist has to sell the biblical point of view that the Christian faith is God’s way to undreamed of personal fulfillment. This will necessitate a shift to a more positive point of view in order to change this false but popular image of Christianity (James Jauncy, Psychology for Successful Evangelism [Chicago: Moody Press, 1972], 39).
Pastors need to be ministers of hope. It should permeate their lives and their preaching. Recently I heard a speaker say that the one who brings the most hope gains the most authority. That’s an amazing and scary thought. Lenin came with a message of hope and changed the world. As his “Utopia” unfolded, people gave everything, even their very lives, to further the cause. People rally around the bearer of hope and submit themselves to him. Hope is a vital quality for pastors.
Peter reminds us that we are to be ready to give an answer, with “gentleness and respect,” to everyone who asks us the reason for our hope (1 Peter 3:15). This is not “pumping sunshine.” Ministry is tough. It involves heartache, tragedy, and despair. The shepherd needs to have a faith which produces a hope that encourages, comforts, and strengthens even as the dark clouds gather. Those who worship Jesus Christ have reason for hope.
A ministry founded on and giving rise to hope is composed of several positive factors:
1. An Unveiled Face—Authenticity. One of the joys of the new covenant is that the veils can come off. Moses came down from the mountain and veiled his face so that his people could not see his glory fade away. In 2 Corinthians 3:12-18 Paul tells us that we no longer have to function as did Moses. When one “turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away”(3:16). Let’s not bring back what God has taken away. The Christian pilgrimage is not one sanctifying experience after which we put on the veil. We don’t reach a point where a veil becomes necessary. The longer we walk with him, the less a veil should be needed. Paul encourages us to look at him with unveiled face as we “are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory” (3:18).
People are attracted by authenticity. The pastor must guard himself against accepting the illusions, fantasies, or distorted expectations of his congregation. Integrity is the critical element. It is so easy to deceive from the pulpit, to preach about things we have not experienced and do not consistently practice. It is so easy to overstate, to play on guilt, and to imply that we solved a particular problem long ago. If we haven’t and imply that we have (often by what we don’t say), we are inauthentic.
2. A Diligent Student of the Word. The demands of ministry are great, but they must not take the pastor away from the Book. Since when should the pastor do the calling, teach Sunday school, chair three or four committees, fold the bulletins, oversee the youth ministries, plan the retreats, and on and on? His job has never been to do the work of the ministry. He is to equip others to do it.
Bible study, however, is hard work. There are plenty of things to keep a pastor “busy” and to provide an excuse for his lack of preparation. Poor preaching keeps most churches poor. Poor preaching in most cases is the result of poor priorities and procrastination. The minister who is going to build a contagious congregation must handle truth skillfully, knowing that truth is the foundation of beauty. Besides direct study of Scripture, the pastor must continue to learn. Seminars, books, retreats, and significant fellowship should have high priority in his schedule. Many secular management training programs are excellent. Each local church should set aside a substantial sum for its pastor’s continuing enrichment. It is money well spent.
3. A Liberator of the Body. The marvelous doctrine of reconciliation helps us see that ultimately evangelism is what Jesus Christ is doing through his church to reach his world. The pattern looks like this. At Christ’s incarnation, God was “reconciling the world to himself in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Since Christ ascended to his Father’s right hand, the Father “has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (5:19-20). That’s what Christ is doing today. He entreats a lost world to be reconciled through his church, which is his body. Christ sows his good seed (beautiful seed) in the world, where his work is to take place.
The pastor must focus his church outward, not inward. His motto should be, “When the saints, go marching out!” The church is not a holy huddle, it is a task force whose primary focus must always be the “fields ripe for harvest.”Unfortunately, bigger buildings, larger programs, and more staff dictate church mission. We must justify our large expenditures, and the basic evangelism strategy becomes herding fish toward our expensive, stained-glass trap. Instead, the church should be God’s family extending itself to meet needs in the name of Jesus. Evangelism is what Jesus is actually doing through the preaching, the worship and fellowship, and the service of the church.
The pastor more than any other individual determines the character of the church’s preaching, fellowship, worship, and service. The content and style of his preaching is critical to the church’s health and beauty. If a church is to be a learning center, the pastor must make diligent preparation so that what is delivered is biblical, balanced, relevant, and liberating. Likewise, the pastor is the key to liberating the church to be a healing communion as he gives himself to building up the body so that it moves toward health. The pastor is also the key to whether or not the church is free to worship and to respond as a family to the presence of God in its midst. Finally, the service of the church is conditioned by the pastor’s vision (or lack of it). Liberating a congregation to be God’s people in service can be threatening. It often involves a rethinking of the pastoral and leadership roles. In most cases it means seeking a lower profile and elevating the gifts and abilities of others.
Jesus desires to explode himself through the lives of his people and do greater works than he did while on earth. He wants once again to touch the untouchables, feed the hungry, bring light where there is darkness and life where there is death. He wants to invite the thirsty—whoever they are, wherever they are—to discover living water. In the counsels of eternity, God decided for a time to link himself (and in a sense limit himself) to the frailties of his creatures. Why he has not evangelized with the hosts of heaven we do not know. What we do know is that Jesus’ mission today is done through us, his ambassadors. We are now members of the second incarnation called to make visible the invisible God. His impact, his mission, is linked to our obedience and vision. If we draw limits he has not drawn, he becomes limited in his outreach. If our hearts have no compassion for the lost, we neglect our commission and Christ’s mission is aborted.
Who do you think God wants to use to reach your neighborhood? Is he doing it? Why not? Pastor, you are God’s instrument to set people free—to encourage them, to liberate them, to give them your blessing to mark the lost for Christ. It may mean you will have to change your attitudes toward the unsaved. You may need to realign your understanding of separation with biblical truth. Perhaps you will have to eliminate some programs, change the thrust and tone of your preaching, focus again on the essentials, and start reaching your own neighborhood. People may need to be encouraged not to attend the programs and activities of the church so they can spend time with the unsaved. Your church may need, with your firm leadership, to move out into the community and serve it. Neglected widows may need help, injustice in your community may need to be confronted, programs may need to be implemented to care for the poor and needy … with no strings attached. You may need to brainstorm with your leadership team about where Jesus would go in your community to meet needs, and then direct resources and people into that area. Christianity in action under qualified leadership is always effective evangelistically.
4. A Builder of Men. Men attract men, especially in a church context. A primary part of the pastor’s job is the building of men. To nudge men on toward maturity takes time and commitment. His must help others to minister—not do the work of ministry himself. The minister is like the foreman in a machine shop, or the coach of a team. He does not do all the work, nor does he make all the plays. (Though he is a working foreman and a playing coach!) If a man can’t operate a lathe, the foreman rolls up his sleeves and shows him how. If a player can’t carry out an assignment, the coach demonstrates how to make the play (Leighton Ford, The Christian Persuaders [New York: Harper & Row, 1969], 49).
Even though the pastor is a shepherd who loves the entire body, a ministry to men must have a special place in his heart. While in the pastorate I met with at least five groups of men each week. I met one on one with a dentist friend, with two other board members, with a group of twenty or thirty businessmen, with the entire board, and with the pastoral staff (seven men). Although the group dynamics were different, the purposes were similar. With mutual accountability we shared the Word, prayer, schedules, and relationships. Each year, at my request, the board of elders met without me to evaluate my ministry, my marriage and family, and anything else they desired. This information, often painful, was shared in love and resulted in growth and encouragement. It also set a precedent. As they saw the value of evaluation, the board members requested that each of them be evaluated too.
We as a board recognized our need to be a redemptive community. We structured our weekly board meetings so that the first hour focused on instruction and worship. Board members rotated the teaching assignment among themselves. I spent hours working with some of the men helping prepare them to preach and teach. What an exciting experience to sit on the front row as one of them delivers the morning message! Men, help your pastor by being honest with him. I remember so well the evening a man in my congregation said to me, “Joe, you’ve been my pastor for two years. I’m disappointed you haven’t built into my life more effectively.” It was a time of soul searching … and growth. You may need to pose a similar question to your pastor to nudge him into one of his most important responsibilities. An effective pastor builds into his leaders to establish the base for a healthy and attractive ministry. Before a church is ready to add members, it must increase the quality and quantity of its leadership. A wise pastor learns how to be a builder of men, then makes this challenge central to his ministry.
5. A Family Specialist. Focus on the family! Target sermons regularly on marriage and family living. Take advantage of the excellent video series and printed materials available. People are hurting desperately in this area. Meet these needs and evangelism problems are practically solved. If your church cannot accept the wreckage of broken homes and shattered dreams, it is not a place where Jesus lives. Your church should be the greatest garbage dump in town—a place where the broken, oppressed, misplaced, abandoned, and unloved can come and find a family where they are accepted and loved … as is. “As is” people are Jesus’ kind of people. The Pharisees despised them. They still do. “As is” people become great disciples and great soul winners. Those who have been forgiven the most love the most. The effective church ministers effectively to families because it is a family. Pastor, you’re the key. Father the fatherless, rebuke the offenders, encourage the discouraged, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep, weep, weep. If your heart is not broken by broken people, you don’t have Jesus’ heart. If your heart is not compelled to go when lost men stumble in darkness, you don’t have Jesus’ heart. Pray that his mission will recapture the hearts of his children and of their leaders.
6. A Careful Planner. The old adage is true: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. A goal is a statement of faith about the future. Visions remain visions unless goals are established as steps to the visions’ realization. Aim at nothing and you’ll hit it every time. A careful planner simply puts a foundation under his fantasy.
Some years ago I put together a document which has been very influential in shaping my life. It contains my personal objectives, goals, and standards. I established objectives and goals in five areas: spiritual, intellectual, physical, family, and ministry. Objectives became broad statements of purpose. Suppose one objective in my spiritual life is to be conformed to the image of Christ. That is a broad, unmeasurable purpose. To achieve it I must establish several goals. One goal would be to maintain a regular Bible study program. Another might be to develop a significant prayer life. Reading Christian biographies could be another goal. If I meet these goals I will be well on my way toward my objective of Christ-likeness. Unfortunately, these goals are still too general and unmeasurable. Therefore, I must establish standards to quantify my goals and make them measurable. Here is a sample:
I. Objective: To be conformed to the image of Christ.
Goal: Regular Bible study Standard:
30 minutes each day in Bible study
Standard: 10 minutes each day in devotional literature
Standard: Weekly reading of pertinent journals, such as Christianity Today
Goal: Develop a significant prayer life
Standard: 30 minutes each day
Standard: Written requests with answers recorded
Standard: Daily prayer with wife and family
Standard: Daily prayer with staff
Goal: Read significant Christian biographies
Standard: One biography per month
Such an exercise is invaluable. The more you plan, the more efficient is your time spent in working. Perhaps the greatest value of planning is the “self-fulfilled prophecy” effect Planning plants seeds which enable visions to grow into realities. Planning is simply taxing the mind to solve the problems that keep us from a fruitful future. Not to plan is not to set in operation the incredible resources of the human mind, a resource which when linked with faith can move mountains. A man of vision plans … so does an effective shepherd.
Our fifth and final question is one only the pastor can answer: “What changes must take place in the life of the pastor to make him that kind of a person?” It is a critical question. Pastors need the insight and the feedback of their leaders to answer it effectively. The question cannot be answered unless it’s asked. My prayer is that many pastors will take the risk … and ask.
Article adapted from the ‘Pastor and Evangelism” in Joe Aldrich. Lifestyle Evangelism: Learning to Open Your Life to Those Around You (pp. 149-160). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.
About the Author:
Dr. Joe Aldrich (Th.D – Dallas Theological Seminary) was the Senior Pastor of Mariners Church in Newport Beach in the 1970’s, and the President of Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland, Oregon in the 1980’s and early 90’s.
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