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I've been thinking this morning about what happens when two doctrines collide.

One is the doctrine of humanity. This doctrine tells us what we were supposed to be, and how sin has made us much less than that. A doctrine of humanity means we're not surprised at human weakness and failure. And because churches are composed of people, it is pretty realistic about the fact that pastors and members of churches will let us down pretty badly at times. I have lots of sympathy for those who have been hurt and burned by their experience with the church. The issues are real.

But take the doctrine of humanity and crash it into the doctrine of the church. In his commentary on Ephesians, John Stott writes:

The letter focuses on what God did through the historical work of Jesus Christ and does through his Spirit today, in order to build a new society in the midst of the old...The true evangelical, who derives his theology from the Bible, will be bound to have the very "high" view of church which the Bible has. Today more than ever we need to catch the biblical vision of the church.

That's why Paul cold write to the presumably ordinary people of Ephesus that they were "saints, faithful in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 1:1).

I'm trying to hold these two doctrines in tension. On one hand, I want to be very realistic about the weakness of the people (including me) who comprise the church. On the other hand, I want to see that the church is a whole lot more than the human weakness we so often see, so that I never think too lowly of the church.

Not an easy tension to hold, but one worth fighting for I think.

My latest column at Christian Week:

This summer I read Iain Murray's two-volume biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, a Welsh preacher who lived from 1899-1981. It caused me to reflect on the condition of the church in North America and our response.

When Lloyd-Jones pastored, churches then were in decline, and traditional approaches to ministry were considered outmoded. Churches responded with three different approaches that seem familiar.

From the latest issue of Themelios:

At the end of the mission trip one of the team members gave me a CD of a sermon called “What is the Gospel?” by Tim Keller. I put it on my desk and thought to myself, “If i don’t know what the Gospel is by now, I am in sad shape.” Indeed...

A couple of months went by and I finally picked up the Keller CD and listened to it as I drove. Before long, I found myself sitting alone in the car, fighting back the tears. Keller was connecting the dots: Christ's relationship with his Father was shattered so that mine might be made whole. I suddenly realized that I had undervalued the Gospel by treating it as merely the starting point of the Christian life, instead of as the all-encompassing source of truth and grace that empowers all of the Christian life...

The article is only three pages long, and it's worth reading. You can find the article on page 62 of this PDF.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones on the headship of Christ over all things, and what this means for us:

Christ is not only head of those who recognize Him as such and submit to Him. He is Lord of all...The world is still God's world. He is not only interested in the saved but also in the unsaved. He has put bounds to sin and government is one of the ways in which He does it. There is common grace as well as special grace...We must be concerned about the world and not only about salvation...The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian in these things is that the Christian will never pin his faith on them as a means to bring ultimate and complete salvation to the race... (Iaian Murray's biography, volume 2)

The Gospel Coalition has revamped their website. They have information about their 2009 conference - I hope to go - as well as a journal you can download in PDF. Definitely worth checking out.

via

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was seriously out of step with preachers in his day who focused on delivering messages focused on the well-being and happiness of the hearers. Lloyd-Jones took the opposite approach, saying:

The more the Church has accommodated her message to suit the palate of the people the greater has been the decline in attendance at places of worship. (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981)

More of his comments here

Because the Gospel is good news about what God has done through Christ, I always cringe a little when I hear people talk about living the Gospel. I know what they mean, but I can relate to what Graeme Goldsworthy says in Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics:

If something is not what God did in and through the historical Jesus two thousand years ago, it is not the gospel...[Christians] can only believe it, proclaim it and seek to live consistently with it. Only Jesus lived (and died) the gospel. It is a once-for-all finished and perfect event done for us by another.

That's good stuff.

But Glenn R. Kreider provides some counterbalance in a review of Goldsworthy's book in the latest issue of Bibliotheca Sacra:

Certainly the gospel (good news) is grounded in the work of Christ, but it would seem to include the future work of Christ as well (including His return and the new creation), as well as blessing for all believers (Gal. 3:8). Furthermore this limitation seems inconsistent with Goldworthy's definition of the gospel as "the event (or proclamation of that event) of Jesus Christ that begins with his incarnation and earthly life, and concludes with his death, resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father" (p. 58). Would not the proclamation of the work of Christ be something that Christians do, and would not that proclamation include living the message as well? In short, how does one separate the verbal and incarnational ministry of the gospel? Did not Paul indicate that Christians do live the gospel when he wrote that "we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus" (2 Cor. 4:10 NIV)? It would seem that one way to understand Paul's testimony in Philippians 3:10-11 is as affirming his desire to live the gospel. "I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow, to attain to the resurrection of the dead" (NIV). Also, Goldworthy's emphasis on the eschatological trajectory of the biblical story seems difficult to reconcile with the strong limitation of the work of Christ completed in the past. He writes, "God's plan from all creation was the new creation and a people created and redeemed in Christ. The blueprint of creation and of all history is the gospel" (p. 223).

I still cringe a little when I hear people talk about "living the Gospel" but I think Kreider has a point. One of our greatest needs is to keep our definitions of the Gospel centered on the work of God in Christ rather than our own works, but then to include all the work that God did through Christ as good news of what God has done and continues to do. Tim Keller's recent article in Leadership Journal is an excellent resource on this topic.

If you are in the Toronto area and enjoy discussing theology over a cold drink, then join us tonight for theology pub.

Place: Sarah’s Café and Bar, 1426 Danforth Ave. (at Monarch Park Ave., west of Coxwell) - phone 416-406-3121

Time: 7:00 until we're done

Topic: We'll be discussing An Evangelical Manifesto. What can we learn from the manifesto? Is it just about positioning evangelicalism in the public eye, or is it calling us to real change?

Hope you can make it.

From Francis Schaeffer:

On the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man but of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the man who - with God's help and in the power of the Holy Spirit - is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. (Pollution and the Death of Man)

Tim Keller's recent article called "The Gospel in All its Forms" is now online. It's well worth reading.