The Saint Struggling With Sin

 I was contemplating Galatians 5.17  - For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want  (NRSV) – which brought me to Thomas Watson’s The Godly Man’s Picture.   Watson, in section 19 of the booklet, describes the saint who struggles with sin.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

“Though sin lives in him [the godly person], yet he does not live in sin.”

“Though sin is in him, he is troubled at it and would gladly get rid of it. …Sin in a wicked man is delightful, being in its natural place, but sin in a child of God is burdensome and he uses all means to expel it.”

“If we would have peace in our souls, we must maintain a war against our favorite sin and never leave off till it is subdued.”

“Grace and sin may be together, but grace and the love of sin cannot.  Therefore parley [meet] with sin no longer, but with the spear of mortification, spill the heart-blood of every sin.”

“A godly man dare not travel for riches along the devil’s highway.”

So Luther said that the Christian life means a severe struggle which never abates until we leave this world.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Christian Bioethics

This is an outstanding book: Bioethics and the Christian Life by David VanDrunen (Wheaton: Crossway, 2009).  While I’ve only read a few books on this subject (including stuff by Stanley Hauerwas and Gilbert Meilaender), I’m glad that this one found its way to my shelves.  I’ll no doubt pass it around to elders, pastors, and church teachers/leaders who counsel people going through tough medical issues.  One major premise of the book which is outstanding is VanDrunen’s emphasis on “virtues we should cultivate in order to be prepared to make such choices well.  Becoming a morally responsible bioethics decision-maker is the task of a lifetime and cannot be reduced to figuring out the right answer at a particular moment of crisis” (p. 15). 

Exactly!  We make tough decisions based on biblical views of sin, salvation, and service – and we make those tough choices as part of a community who may be affected by the choices we make.  VanDrunen well calls us away from selfishness and isolation in bioethical decisions.  “Not only must we think of others in the  midst of our own suffering, but we must also take account of how the decisions we make while we suffer often deeply affect others” (p. 83).  This is something to remember now before we suffer deeply: love your neighbor as yourself!

VanDrunen talks about virtues (faith, hope, love, courage, contentment, and wisdom) from a biblical perspective, with faith as the God-given fount of the other virtues.  This section on virtues comes after he sets the theological table by reminding the readers of the main truths of the faith (God’s sovereignty and providence, man as image bearing social creatures, sin, death, salvation, resurrection, and eternal life just to name a few).  One part of the virtues section I thought was outstanding was his section on contentment.  Our first responsibility as we face a tough choice is to learn contentment in whatever condition we experience, accepting the fact that God in his will and providence may not relieve us from the pain or struggle. 

“Then, from this perspective of contentment, the Christian should consider morally permissible ways to remedy her condition.  I would argue, moreover, that true contentment may significantly alter our perspective on the dilemmas we face and it may even persuade us, at times, that remaining in our undesired condition is the most ethically satisfying decision” (p. 90).

I’ll post more from the last part (where VanDrunen digs into some bioethical situations) some other time.  In summary, for now, I highly recommend this book for a variety of Christians from different backgrounds and traditions.  The book doesn’t attack all the health care woes and conundrums we face in the U.S., but it does focus on Christians and how our faith should influence our tough decisions in a God-honoring, neighbor-loving way.  Because we do live in a time and country where there are thousands of health care conundrums, we need this book all the more!

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Specifics of Gloryfing God

We all know the excellent opening statement of the Westminster Shorter Catechism: the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  Of course this is totally biblical (1 Cor 10, Col 3, 1 Pet 4, etc.), but sometimes it gets fuzzy in practice.  In other words, what exactly does it mean to glorify God?  How do we do it? 

Thomas Watson, in his typically clear way, summarizes the biblical teaching on glorifying God in a concise, memorable, and practical way.  Here are a few comments of his. 

We aim at God’s glory:

1) When we prefer God’s glory above all other things; above credit, estate, relations; when the glory of God coming in competition with them, we prefer his glory before them.  If relations lie in our way to heaven, we must either leap over them, or tread upon them.

2) When we are content that God’s will should take place, though it may cross ours.  Lord, I am content to be a loser if thou be a gainer; to have less health, if I have more grace, and thou more glory.

3) When we are content to be outshined by others in gifts and esteem, so that his glory may be increased.  A man that has God in his heart, and God’s glory in his eye, desires that God should be exalted; and if this be effected, let who will be the instrument, he rejoices.  …Let my candle go out, if the Sun of Righteousness may shine.

He lists quite a few more, showing the Scriptures that guide us in glorifying God.    I especially liked the three quoted above: we glorify God by dying to self, dying to the world, and being humble (esteeming others better than ourselves).   We glorify God when we really just quit thinking of ourselves and focus on him then our neighbor, as the summary of the law teaches in Matthew 22.  Just for your info, here are a few more Watson lists.  We glorify God when we 1) walk cheerfully, 2) stand up for his truths, 3) praise him, 4) draw others to him, and 5) live holy lives.  Again, Watson uses Scripture and illustrates these in a clear way. 

This book – A Body of Divinity – is based on the Shorter Catechism, so it covers the main topics of Christian doctrine.  I highly recommend it.  You can get it sent to your door for just under 15 bucks (last time I checked).  It’s certainly worth giving up two months of Netflix to get this book.

Above quotes taken from pages 11-17.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Fear, Worry, and Anxiety in the Pilgrim Life

I’m really enjoying this one by Ed Welch.  It is an easy, clear, straight forward yet penetrating discussion of what fear, worry, and anxiety do to us in our pilgrim life.  Welch has studied humans and their fear and he’s studied scripture, which makes for a practical read.

Part one covers the following: 1) Fear and worry that run deep in us all, 2) Fear and worry have meaning and they tell us something, 3) Fear and world have to do with a dangerous world, and 4) Fear and worry reveal some of our deepest loves and values in life (sometimes in a way we hate to see!).  I just finished part one, so I’ll post a couple pieces from it.

“Any time you love or want something deeply, you will notice fear and anxieties because you might not get them.  Any time you can’t control the fate of those things you want or love, you will notice fears and anxieties because you might lose them.  Good insurance policies might help, but they only lessen the risk on things that aren’t our real worries.  They can’t insure that our loved ones will outlive us or keep us from the ravages of age.  Control and certainty are myths” (p. 28).

Welch also has a great discussion showing that money is quite powerful.

“If we need what money can give us, we will notice rising insecurities whenever we do the bills.  …With money we can get adequate medical treatment, love, respect, and care in our old age.  Nothing else in creation can offer so much control and power.  Without it we are vulnerable and powerless.  No wonder our fears attach themselves to our net worth” (p. 41).

This has been a helpful book so far, even though I’m not finished.  I do wish it had a scripture index and a topical index, but this doesn’t rob the content at all.  Running Scared would make a great book-club selection, as it would be easy to read and discuss together.  Welch even has some questions scattered throughout the book for further reflection.   I’ll post more some other time, but for now, get the book (it’s less than 11 bucks!) if you want a practical and biblical “attack” on your worry, fear, and anxiety.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

To H in a Handbasket?

 Thomas Brooks, in Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices (1652), opened his discussion with these stout words:

“Christ, the Scripture, your own hearts, and Satan’s devices are the four prime things that should be first and most studied and searched…to discover the fullness of Christ, the emptiness of the creature, and the snares of the great deceiver.”

The book goes on to explore those themes in a way that is comforting and practical for Christian warfare, for sanctification (mortification and vivification).  Christ and Scripture are front and center, but we must also consider our waywardness and Satan’s tricks – this is the perspective from which Brooks writes.

In our cultural climate, however, it is much more popular for preachers and teachers to be culturally savvy and politically aware.  We’d rather hear conservative sermons about the bad stuff “out there,” about the crimes of the government, the wickedness of vampire movies, the illness of society, and so forth than the errors of our own hearts and the dark ways in which Satan attacks us.  Unfortunately, we’re usually only taught how to interact with the sins “out there,” how to hate them and reform society, but we’re left hanging on a limb when it comes to fighting our own dark hearts and Satan’s deadly arrows.  In fact, the focus might be so lopsided that we actually start to think that most of the darkness lies outside of us – in “society” rather than our own beings.

Willimon says it much better than I can.  It is easy to “lament the evil that is large, systemic, political,  natural, and cosmic.  Keep sin large, global, universal.  Talk about the evil done to us by those wicked institutions, these unjust systems of economic distribution.  Surely part of the popularity of the Left Behind books is that they posit the threat of evil out there, somewhere, in some vast cosmic conspiracy.  Jesus, the one better represented in the New Testament than in the Left Behind books, might tell us that we don’t need to look that far to discover the source of most of the bad that afflicts us” (Sinning Like a Christian, p. 15).

Brooks’ Precious Remedies is is a heavy and serious antidote to this lopsidedness of seeing sin “out there.”  It won’t help us be culture warriors or political pundits or give us the ability to make crass and “twitterable” statements about big government.  But it does something much better: teach us from Scripture to flee and fight our sin and Satan’s devices while resting in the sufficiency of the cross.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Prideful Perverse Enjoyment

Pride is a killer.  It is tough to see, tough to own up to, and tough to repent of because it is ever so subtle.  You can repent of anger outbursts, sexual stumbles, and lack of zeal because those are usually easy to spot in your own life.   Pride, however, is a killer because it is camouflaged. In Bridges terms, the sin of “moral superiority and self-righteousness is so easy to fall into today, when society as a whole is openly committing or condoning such flagrant sins as immorality, easy divorce, a homosexual lifestyle, abortion, drunkeness, drug use, avarice, and other flagrant and scandalous sins.”

“Because we don’t commit those sins, we tend to feel morally superior and look with a certain amount of disdain or contempt on those who do.  …I venture that of all the subtle sins we will address in this book, the pride of moral superiority may be the most common, second only to the sin of ungodliness.  But though it is so prevalent among us, it is difficult to recognize because we all practice it to some degree.  In fact, we seem to get a perverse enjoyment out of discussing how awful society around us is becoming.  When we engage in this kind of thinking or conversation, we are guilty of the pride of moral superiority.”

How can we fight against this?  First, Bridges said, by praying for an attitude “of humility based on the truth that ‘there but for the grace of God go I.’”  “Rather than feeling morally superior to those who practice the flagrant sins we condemn, we ought to feel deeply grateful that God by his grace has kept us from, or perhaps rescued us from, such a lifestyle.”  Second, we can guard against pride “by identifying ourselves before God with the sinful society we live in.”  In other words, we are part of the cultural mess we’re in!  We can pray that God would not only give us an attitude of humility, but also the grace and wisdom to see our own pride in every corner of our heart to fight it with the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God (Eph. 6.17).

Quotes taken from Jerry Bridges, Respectable Sins (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 2007), chapter 11.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Addictions

Ed Welch wrote a great book on addictions – with that title: Addictions, A Banquet in the Grave (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2001).  This book is a must-read for pastors, elders, and others who are involved in teaching, counseling, and leading God’s people.  Those who have faced (or do face!) an addiction or an addict will want to read this book as well.

In this book, Welch shows the biblical ways to think about addictions: the primary problem is sin, idolatry in the heart.  Here’s his definition.  “Addiction is bondage to the rule of a substance, activity, or state of mind, which then becomes the center of life, defending itself from the truth so that even bad consequences don’t bring repentance, and leading to further estrangement from God” (p. 35).  Furthermore, “The thing that drives addictions can be found in every heart” (p. 13).

Idolatry and addiction go hand in hand.  “Drugs and sex are the modern golden calves erected by addicts to find meaning, power, and pleasure apart from God.  Addicts often believe they have found life, but any payoff they experience is short lived and deceptive.  They are blinded by the fact that they are having a banquet in the grave.  They are truly out of control, victims of their own lust” (p. 53).

Throughout this book, Welch discusses the nuts and bolts of what addiction is, how an addict got to his/her position, how to help an addict (a gospel centered approach), and how to fight for freedom once a person has been freed from addiction.  Each chapter has a concluding section of application, facing our own addictions, and helping others face theirs.  This book is good because it is biblical, gospel centered, church-centered, and completely practical in dealing with the sin of addiction.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Bioethics

Can’t wait for this one!

Here’s the blurb fromm Crossway’s website:

Just about everyone will face a difficult bioethics decision at some point. In this book a theologian, ethicist, and lawyer equips Christians to make such decisions based on biblical truth, wisdom, and virtue.

Though a relatively new discipline, bioethics has generated extraordinary interest due to a number of socially pressing issues. Bioethics and the Christian Life places bioethics within the holistic context of the Christian life, both developing a general Christian approach to making bioethics decisions and addressing a number of specific, controversial areas of bioethics.

Clear, concise, and well-organized, the book is divided into three sections. The first lays the theological foundation for bioethics decision-making and discusses the importance of wisdom and virtue in working through these issues. The second section addresses beginning-of-life issues, such as abortion, stem-cell research, and infertility treatments. The third section covers end-of-life issues, such as living wills, accepting and refusing medical treatment, and treatment of patients in permanent vegetative states.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Bavinck on Justification

On what basis does God justify the sinner?  Rome and others say that God justifies a person insofar as he is sanctified; in other words, God justifies someone because the person has some grace-infused obedience inside himself.  Rome and others (like the NPP) thus say that the Reformation position – that God justifies the ungodly by faith alone only on the grounds of an external righteousness (Christ’s) – is a legal fiction.    They call this historic Protestant position legal fiction because God justifies someone who is not actually good inside.  Bavinck turns this argument on its head: actually, the position of Rome (et. al.) is the one that distorts the justice of God in justification.  Here he is:

Besides the fact that Holy Scriptures very plainly speak of justification as a legal or forensic act, this further fact must be pointed out to the opponents of the doctrine of justification: they have a mistaken notion of what justification is.  They say that such an acquittal of man on the basis of a righteousness outside of himself is unworthy of man and that leaves him quite unchanged.  But this charge comes back upon the heads of those who make it, for if they justify a person on the basis of a righteousness which is in him, they must themselves certainly admit that this righteousness in man here on earth is very frail and imperfect, and must therefore conclude that God justifies a person on the basis of a very inadequate righteousness and thus makes himself guilty of a false judgment.  On the other hand, an acquittal based on the righteousness which is in Christ is a perfectly just one for it was presented perfectly by God himself in the Son of his love.

This is penetrating.  If God does justify a person insofar as he is sanctified, this justification is unjust, because a person’s sanctification is imperfect and mixed with sin, and God would be accounting someone righteous who is imperfectly righteous.  The historic Protestant position says that God justifies the ungodly based on the perfect obedience (righteousness) of Jesus Christ, which is credited to their account by a God-given faith alone.   Bavinck goes on to explain.

Justification and sanctification are not the same, and ought to be sharply differentiated from each other.  For whoever neglects or erases this distinction again sets up a self-righteousness in man, does injustice to the completeness and adequacy of the righteousness of God which has been manifested in Christ, changes the gospel into a new law, robs the soul of man of its only comfort, and makes salvation dependent upon human merits.  In justification, faith has only the role of a receiving agency, like that of the hand which accepts something; by it the soul places its dependency solely in Christ and his righteousness.  …[Faith] justifies not by its own intrinsic moral worth but by its content, namely, the righteousness of Christ.

This entire section on the topic of justification in Our Reasonable Faith is worth a thousand dollars (p 439-468).  If you read one ST this year, please, make it this one!  This book is a Reformation antidote to Rome, NPP, and FV and a catalyst for confessional piety.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

Covenant and Election

How do we answer the covenant moralists?  How do Reformation Christians answer those who say that our works have something to do with our justification?  Do we start with covenant and view election through covenant, with some moralists?  Do we deny the covenant of works and sneak it through the back door of the covenant of grace?

Bavinck is one antidote to covenant moralism.  He brings reformation and scholastic truths together and stands against any conflation, confusion, or rejection of covenants and election.  Actually, in the early 1900’s, he said “there are many, it is true, who are committed to a different idea” than the one of historic Reformation covenant theology and election.  “These take their vantage point in the covenant of grace and from that position deny and attack the counsel of redemption.  In the name of the purity of the Gospel they reject the confession of election.  Actually, they thus destroy the covenant of grace and convert the Gospel once more into a new law.”

This is brilliant.  To paraphrase, Bavinck is saying that those who tweak the historic Reformation understanding of the eternal, intra-trinitarian covenant (pactum salutis) and view it in light of the covenant of grace (the historical, organic outworking of the pre-temporal decree and covenant) – these people are ultimately attacking the pactum salutis and the eternal decree of election.   In simpler terms yet, if a person reaches back into the decrees of election with the lens of the historical covenant of grace, that person destroys the pactum and election.  One result of this is denying the covenant of works as distinct from the covenant of grace.  When this happens, the “merit” texts in Scripture are subsumed into the covenant of grace.  This equals covenant moralism, confusing justification and sanctification.  Here’s Bavinck:

“…When the covenant of grace is separated from election, it ceases to be a covenant of grace and becomes again a covenant of works.  Election implies that God grants man freely and out of grace the salvation which man has forfeited and which he can never again achieve in his own strength.  But if this salvation is not the sheer gift of grace but in some way depends upon the conduct of men, then the covenant of grace is converted into a covenant of works.  Man must then satisfy some condition in order to inherit eternal life.

“So far from election and the covenant of grace forming a contrast of opposites, the election is the basis and guarantee, the heart and core, of the covenant of grace.  And it is so indispensably important to cling to this close relationship because the least weakening of it [or, as he said earlier, conflating the order] not merely robs one of the true insight into the achieving and application of salvation, but also robs the believers of their only and sure comfort in the practice of their spiritual life.”

Notice how far reaching this is – reformulating the reformation truth of the covenants leads to a messed up view of election (saying there are different degrees of election), justification (injecting our works there where they do not belong), and sanctification (making justification dependent on sanctification).  It also throws our salvation back into stormy waters, teaching that only those who make it to the life raft will get out of the seas of death.  Who can be truly pious when their salvation depends on something they do?

Bavinck’s section on the covenant of grace in his book (which the above quotes are taken from) Our Reasonable Faith (pages 260-279) is a must read for any student of Reformation theology on the topic of covenants.

shane lems

sunnyside wa