Thursday, November 29, 2007
Boise Calvinist Acts29 Church Boise, or, Shameless Search Engine Try
OK, let's see how this search engine thing works.....Ever hear of Piper? Sproul? Mahaney? Like them? Live in Boise? Enough said: http://www.thewellboise.com/ Is church a hobby? A country-club with a cross on top? A suburbafied self-help seminar? Maybe a bit effeminate? You know you can do something about that, right? It's not too late. Yes, you! Be a man already. Grace and peace to the saints in Laodicea.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
On Evidences for Conversion - I
What does it look like when someone is born again? It does look like something, you know. And conversely it does not look like other things. My first pastor had a phrase he used all the time—radically saved! But I think what he was really trying to convey is the reality of the truly saved: a picture of those who are genuine believers in Jesus, as opposed to those whose faith is merely a profession of superficial words and perhaps a few begrudging duties. Someone as brilliant and godly as Jonathan Edwards even wrote a whole book about it. He was concerned about some of the criticisms leveled against the Great Awakening going on in New England and wondered if some of its more emotional excesses were not phony isolated spiritual “highs,” as the critics supposed. As a pastor, he wanted to discern whether or not his ministry was truly bearing the eternal fruit that these radical changes would hopefully suggest. And so the Religious Affections (1746) was an investigation into the nature of true evidences of supernatural conversion.
That is probably the best place to start with—conversion, or being “born again,” is a supernatural event. It cannot be reduced to our formulas of marketing, psychology, or do-it-yourself methods. It is the creation of a new man or woman, one whose whole sense of being is driven by a love for Jesus Christ and toward a reckless abandon for the inheritance in Him. This is first and foremost a love, a love that we did not have before, a love that we could not and would not generate on our own. Paul closes his first letter to the Corinthians by warning: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” [16:22]. Yes, God commands of the creature what we, in Adam, are unable to perform. Our souls, our bodies, our time, our property, our decisions, were all ordained so that the glory of God would be reflected in these things to all else in creation, so that all would be happy. However, being the offspring of the first sinner, we are by nature irrational in our conviction of what will satisfy and what life is really all about. The old man has no love for the Lord, and he is accursed.
My own interest in this subject is in one sense the opposite of Edwards. He was brought to the need to study this from an excess in vital signs. We in suburban America need to examine signs of conversion precisely because there are not many. Even the natural life is sufficient to explain the passion with which we see virtually everyone else engaged. The cultist, the statist, the artist, and the garden variety hedonist—they all move toward a definite end and are filled with a sense of purpose. The only person it seems that does not move with this force is the one person that ought to. Not all of the reasons for this are a matter of materialistic idolatry. Perhaps the only reason that everyone else moves so freely within their irrational universes is because their target is so very low to the ground and manageable. The chasm between God and man is infinite; and we are moving in the opposite direction like falling rocks. What to do?
The answer is what God said He would do way back in the Old Testament prophets: “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” [Ez. 11:19-20, cf. 36:26]. This is exactly what Jesus was referring to when he said to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” [Jn. 3:3]. So, what to do? Only something that you cannot do, something that only God can do for you. And it is only in despair over this moral inability that we begin to take the supernatural nature of the Christian faith seriously.
And so when we talk about conversion, we are talking about an actual new life: “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” [2 Cor. 5:17]. This is not metaphor. It is not an empty rah-rah speech. The Bible means what it seems to be saying here. When someone becomes a real believer in Jesus, the person becomes something totally different than what he or she was before. No doubt the believer also retains things from what they were; and not all of this is bad. The unique way in which God has made each of us is now brought to spiritual life and set in a Godward motion. Conversion does not stomp out our psyches—it purifies and amplifies them.
I have never been very good at telling stories or even applying truth. However, from time to time, a useful analogy will come to mind that helps others come to grips with some deeper truths. Here I will be using the analogy of a particular living thing—a flower. I am not much of a botanist and so my analogy will break down in both natural and unnatural ways. In this analogy, the whole of the flower symbolizes the whole of the new person in Christ. The root of the flower will refer to the objective work of Christ on behalf of the believer; the sunlight and rain will mean the ongoing work of the Word[1] and the Spirit in transforming our souls into the new person; the soil will stand for the believing community (called “the church) in which faith is cultivated; the stem represents the three faculties of the person’s being—mind, heart, and will—through which conversion occurs and is perfected; and only then do we turn to the petals that stand for the fruit of the Spirit by which we see true conversion made manifest. According to Paul in Galatians 5, there are nine such “petals,” and so we will restrict ourselves to those in order to be as biblical as possible.
· THE PERSON & WORK OF CHRIST (The Roots of this Life)
· THE SPIRIT & THE WORD (The Sunlight & Rain of this Life)
· LIFE TOGETHER IN THE CHURCH (The Soil of this Life)
· THREE PARTS OF THE BELIEVER (The Stem of this Life)
· PETAL 1 – LOVE
· PETAL 2 – JOY
· PETAL 3 – PEACE
· PETAL 4 – PATIENCE
· PETAL 5 – KINDNESS
· PETAL 6 – GOODNESS
· PETAL 7 – FAITHFULNESS
· PETAL 8 – GENTLENESS
· PETAL 9 – SELF-CONTROL
That is probably the best place to start with—conversion, or being “born again,” is a supernatural event. It cannot be reduced to our formulas of marketing, psychology, or do-it-yourself methods. It is the creation of a new man or woman, one whose whole sense of being is driven by a love for Jesus Christ and toward a reckless abandon for the inheritance in Him. This is first and foremost a love, a love that we did not have before, a love that we could not and would not generate on our own. Paul closes his first letter to the Corinthians by warning: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” [16:22]. Yes, God commands of the creature what we, in Adam, are unable to perform. Our souls, our bodies, our time, our property, our decisions, were all ordained so that the glory of God would be reflected in these things to all else in creation, so that all would be happy. However, being the offspring of the first sinner, we are by nature irrational in our conviction of what will satisfy and what life is really all about. The old man has no love for the Lord, and he is accursed.
My own interest in this subject is in one sense the opposite of Edwards. He was brought to the need to study this from an excess in vital signs. We in suburban America need to examine signs of conversion precisely because there are not many. Even the natural life is sufficient to explain the passion with which we see virtually everyone else engaged. The cultist, the statist, the artist, and the garden variety hedonist—they all move toward a definite end and are filled with a sense of purpose. The only person it seems that does not move with this force is the one person that ought to. Not all of the reasons for this are a matter of materialistic idolatry. Perhaps the only reason that everyone else moves so freely within their irrational universes is because their target is so very low to the ground and manageable. The chasm between God and man is infinite; and we are moving in the opposite direction like falling rocks. What to do?
The answer is what God said He would do way back in the Old Testament prophets: “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God” [Ez. 11:19-20, cf. 36:26]. This is exactly what Jesus was referring to when he said to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” [Jn. 3:3]. So, what to do? Only something that you cannot do, something that only God can do for you. And it is only in despair over this moral inability that we begin to take the supernatural nature of the Christian faith seriously.
And so when we talk about conversion, we are talking about an actual new life: “If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” [2 Cor. 5:17]. This is not metaphor. It is not an empty rah-rah speech. The Bible means what it seems to be saying here. When someone becomes a real believer in Jesus, the person becomes something totally different than what he or she was before. No doubt the believer also retains things from what they were; and not all of this is bad. The unique way in which God has made each of us is now brought to spiritual life and set in a Godward motion. Conversion does not stomp out our psyches—it purifies and amplifies them.
I have never been very good at telling stories or even applying truth. However, from time to time, a useful analogy will come to mind that helps others come to grips with some deeper truths. Here I will be using the analogy of a particular living thing—a flower. I am not much of a botanist and so my analogy will break down in both natural and unnatural ways. In this analogy, the whole of the flower symbolizes the whole of the new person in Christ. The root of the flower will refer to the objective work of Christ on behalf of the believer; the sunlight and rain will mean the ongoing work of the Word[1] and the Spirit in transforming our souls into the new person; the soil will stand for the believing community (called “the church) in which faith is cultivated; the stem represents the three faculties of the person’s being—mind, heart, and will—through which conversion occurs and is perfected; and only then do we turn to the petals that stand for the fruit of the Spirit by which we see true conversion made manifest. According to Paul in Galatians 5, there are nine such “petals,” and so we will restrict ourselves to those in order to be as biblical as possible.
· THE PERSON & WORK OF CHRIST (The Roots of this Life)
· THE SPIRIT & THE WORD (The Sunlight & Rain of this Life)
· LIFE TOGETHER IN THE CHURCH (The Soil of this Life)
· THREE PARTS OF THE BELIEVER (The Stem of this Life)
· PETAL 1 – LOVE
· PETAL 2 – JOY
· PETAL 3 – PEACE
· PETAL 4 – PATIENCE
· PETAL 5 – KINDNESS
· PETAL 6 – GOODNESS
· PETAL 7 – FAITHFULNESS
· PETAL 8 – GENTLENESS
· PETAL 9 – SELF-CONTROL
[1] The word of God is also pictured as the seed in several places in Scripture [cf. Mat. 13:24-33, 1 Pet. 1:23]; however, it seems to be restricted in those analogies to a singular seed that might focus us on the initial gospel message that comes to us, rather than the continual sanctifying, persevering word that the believer requires throughout the course of one’s life. Thus, I have preferred to see the word as rain instead of seed to prevent this confusion. We might picture the seed as the evangelistic word produced by each of these flowers.
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