What does “God so loved the world” mean?

It is so easy to think John 3.16 means “God loves every single human being so much” and leave it at that. But it has to mean more than that. It says “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son.”

It still might be easy to think it means “God loves every single human being so much, so He gave Jesus.” But it has to mean more than that. It says “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son.” John 3.16 starts with the word “for”! And right before that, Jesus says, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” So just like Moses lifted a bronze serpent (a symbol of a cursed and defeated enemy) for the life of the Israelites, so Jesus must be lifted up (on the cross, as a crushed enemy of God!) for the life of believers. God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son to die!

It still might be easy to think it means “God loves every single human being so much, so He gave His Son to die.” But it has to mean more than that. For what does dying have to do with love? If you know the gospel, you know that Jesus died in the place of sinners, so that sinners would not have to die. So that does sound loving. But John 3.16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son (to die), that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

So many conclude John 3.16 means “God loves every human being so much, so he gave Jesus to die in their place, to give them a chance to be saved.” That is where good old fashioned logic helps. In John 3.16 God’s love leads to the sending of the Son, which leads to every believer being saved. The end of God’s love is every believer being saved. Go ahead and read John 3.16 again, and see if that is not what it actually says. In other words, God’s love does not merely produce a chance. God’s love produces salvation for believers!

Good Friday is good because it is the day God loved the world!

Tom Schreiner is Amillenial

Dr. Tom Schreiner recently preached a sermon on Revelation 20 at our church. Regardless of your view on the Millennium, it was a blessing. He preached the gospel!

However, he did spend a few minutes discussing why he is now an Amillenial. He gives 6 reasons:

1. A future, earthly Millenium is taught nowhere else explicitly in the Bible- a difficulty that all Premillenials accept
2. Revelation is unquestionably full of recapitulation- so for Revelation 20 to re-tell history from another angle is not surprising
3. The so-called Millenium texts of the OT are all over Revelation 21-22, not Rev 20- if the earthly Millennium was taught in places like Ezekiel 40-48 and Isaiah 60, you would expect Revelation 20 to allude to them. However Revelation 21-22 allude to them, and everyone agrees the last two chapters of the bible refer to the New Creation!
4. The debates about the Millenium have always been around- I think Dr. Schreiner was saying Premillenials claim to have the historic position, but there have been forms of Postmillenialism and Amillenialism from the early church fathers period.
5. Revelation 19 is the death of all the enemies of Christ- it is illogical to believe that all Christ’s enemies are killed at His Second Coming in chapter 19, then there is a 1000 year period where Satan can do nothing, then he’s released for a short time and there are innumerable enemies after the Millennium all of a sudden
6. It’s the simplest- there is no doubt the simplicity of the Amillenial view is a part of its attractiveness. God does make important things in the Bible understandable to the unlearned

Numbers 3 and 5 are the two strongest arguments. And I would love to hear a reasoned defense by Premillenials against those objections. I am an Amillenial for all these reasons as well.

To these, I’ll add a seventh reason: Tom Schreiner is an Amillenial

Away with Personal Devotions! part 4

Three reasons:

1. It is never commanded
2. Christians need to be taught the Bible

And #3: The Christian life is never meant to be mainly “personal”

This could get “personal” for some of you. But I hope it is biblical. Before anything else let me be clear: the only way anyone becomes a Christian is by personally responding to the gospel with repentance and faith. Our relationship with God is a personal relationship through Christ. No doubt.

But then what does the Christian life look like after entering into a personal relationship? Consider the following:

Acts 2.42, after 3000 personally responded to the gospel: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”

Acts 4.32: “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul.”

Acts 20.20, 31: “I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house...remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears.”

Romans 15.14: “you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge and able to instruct one another.”

Ephesians 4.15-16: “speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.”

Hopefully that gives you a taste of the corporate nature of the Christian life. And I would challenge anyone to find the kind of emphasis on personal Christian walk in the Bible that would all of  a sudden make personal devotions such a trademark of spirituality. Some implications:

• We have all probably been too quick to make personal, individualistic applications of passages, rather than corporate, local church applications. It does not need to be either/or, but I suspect for many it has only been the former instead of the latter.
• Personal quiet time is not more spiritual than family quiet time or married couple quiet time or church quiet time
• There is no better way to be of one heart and one soul with your church than to regularly read the bible and pray together.
• If anything, there is much more emphasis on the corporate nature of the Christian life than the individual nature in the Bible. Therefore, there may be greater humility and accuracy in seeking to grow as a member of your church rather than just abstractly as a Christian. In other words, “Jesus loves me” probably should be replaced more often than not with “Jesus loves us.” Too much “Jesus loves me” apart from the church really starts to become a man-centered gospel after a while.

So with that, keep reading your bibles as much as you can!

Away with Personal Devotions, part 3

My aim in these posts is for Christians to stop making traditional quiet-time-consistency a measuring stick for spiritual maturity. I am not discouraging anyone from reading the bible day and night! I am trying to discourage you from making quiet times a measuring stick for Christian maturity. The single mom who devotes herself to the public reading of Scripture, exhortation, and the teaching each Sunday and applies that to her life throughout the week, but never has a traditional quiet time through the week, may be more mature than the Christian who does not hear good preaching on Sunday but has a great read-thru-the-bible-in-a-year plan and never misses a day.

Really, I am trying to help clarify biblical maturity. And as I said in the last post, the bible never commands daily devotional readings. The bible commands us to meditate on the Law day and night. And regularly meditating on the Law will lead you to meditate on the gospel. And meditation upon God’s Word can come in all shapes, sizes, time frames, and contexts.

A second reason I want to discourage you from asking people “how’s your time with the Lord” to gauge their spiritual life is because Christians need to be taught the Bible. Christians need to be fed by pastors and teachers. In other words, the Bible does not emphasize our need to feed ourselves during our quiet times.

Consider these passages:

“Do you love me…feed by lambs…do you love me…tend my sheep…do you love me…feed my sheep.” (John 21.15-17)

“he gave the apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to equip the saints” (Eph 4.11-12)

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers.” (James 3.1)

Some implications:

• there is no guilt in always wanting to be taught by your pastors and sunday school teachers the meaning of different passages
• using commentaries and other helps to understand the bible gets you to the exact same place as when you read a passage yourself and understand it; there is no more virtue in studying the bible with just your bible than there is in studying the bible with a commentary on hand
• When you ask someone, “how’s your time in the Word going?” what you should mean is “how is the preaching of the Word on Sundays affecting your life?” before you mean “how is your daily bible readings affecting your life?”
• What if someone has bad methods of interpreting the bible? A daily quiet time in the traditional sense could be disastrous!
• Humble yourself, Christian. Stop thinking you need to teach yourself. There’s nothing wrong with teaching yourself. But wouldn’t you rather have John Calvin and Matthew Henry and D.A. Carson and your pastors teach you? They are gifts from God to you

I wonder if personal quiet times are more a product of 21st century individualism than true, Christian piety. More on that next time

 

Away with Personal Devotions! part 2

Remember, I would never discourage anyone from reading their bible. I intend only to encourage Christians to read the Bible more and more faithfully.

Let me also clear up one possible misunderstanding: the title of these posts is “away with personal devotions!” I should clarify: I want to do away with personal devotions as most Christians I know conceive of it. I want to do away with the notion that spiritual maturity has a direct correlation with the amount of time one spends with a bible and notebook each morning. I want to do away with the notion that consistency in “personal quiet times” is a tell-tale sign of spiritual health. I want Christians to stop asking “how is your devotional life?” as a spiritual diagnostic question. I want the stay-at-home mom who never has time for a traditional “quiet time” to stop feeling guilty about that!

Why? I’m glad you asked.

My first answer is it is never commanded. The Bible never commands personal quiet times or personal devotions or whatever you want to call it. You might think, “what about Psalm 1: blessed is the man…his delight is in the Law of the Lord and on His Law he meditates day and night?”

I say “amen!” But notice two things about what Psalm 1 says:

1. You’re blessed if you meditate- it does not merely say read or spend time with the Lord. It says meditate. Pore over His Word. That can come in many different forms, not merely in a personal quiet time. That could come in the form of personal, alone time in the Word, OR  thinking about the sermon text, OR thinking about a verse your friend shared with you yesterday, OR listening to sermons online, OR having family worship day and night. The possibilities are endless. But the question is “have you meditated on God’s word today?”
2. You must meditate on the Law- It also technically says “his delight is in the Law.” That could be more, but it is not less than the 10 Commandments. We should meditate on God’s Law, how high His standard is, how we break it over and over, and let that drive us constantly back to the gospel. Meditate. God’s Law. Day and night, meaning all the time. If you want to know how someone is doing spiritually, ask them, “have you thought deeply about how you have broken God’s commands today?” Then preach the gospel to believer and unbeliever alike.

Have you meditated on the Law today?

Away with Personal Devotions! part 1

Let me be clear on one thing: I would never discourage anyone from reading their bible. I would only encourage people to read it more and more faithfully.

Let me define “personal devotions”- an individual worship time, usually involving reading the bible and prayer.

Some people call it a “quiet time” or “time with the Lord.” I grew up being encouraged to have daily “quiet times” and it often involves a journal. For me today, it always involves a cup of coffee.

I would never discourage anyone from reading their bible. I would only encourage people to read it more and more faithfully.

The one thing I would discourage today: let us stop making Christians feel like “personal devotions”– whether you had one today and how consistent you are in having them– are one of the key measures for Christian maturity.

Three reasons:

1. It is never commanded
2. Christians need to be taught the Bible
3. The Christian life is never meant to be mainly “personal”

I will tackle these in subsequent posts. Related to number 2, please consider coming to this event in January

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point many Bible-believing Christians became passionate about the dichotomy between “prescriptive” and “descriptive” passages in Scripture.

“Prescriptive” means God is prescribing, or commanding, or telling how something must be done. We must follow prescriptive passages. For instance, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20.3) is prescriptive for the Christian church.

“Descriptive” means God is simply describing what happened in biblical times, not telling us how something must be done, but only telling us that something was done. Many Christians apparently believe we are never obligated to follow descriptive passages. For instance, Abraham had more than one wife, and yet He was blessed by God. That is descriptive, not prescriptive for the Christian church.

I generally agree with the distinction. And I think it is fairly obvious whenever something is purely descriptive, not intended for us to follow (like multiple wives). But, as I’m sure you suspected I might say, please be careful.

Some commands are descriptive of a certain time period and/or covenantal arrangement (“all males must be circumcised” or “you shall not eat shellfish”). And my contention is that many descriptions in Scripture are prescriptive. And for sure, all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable to help us do good works (2 Timothy 3.16-17, note “all”).

So listen more closely to what God is saying by what He said. I would give examples, but I don’t want to get your mind going in more directions than it needs to. The principle I am aiming for here is we must let all of Scripture– not just the explicit commands– speak to us and shape our thinking and make us more Christ-like. If there is a description of something often in the Bible that looks good, seems to be commended, seems to be blessed by the Spirit, and/or has good results, then we should take those descriptions as prescriptive.

Be careful with the submission caveat

It is so common for complementarians to say, “wives, submit to your husband UNLESS they command you to sin.” That goes for any authority-submission relationship. But if you are ever studying or teaching one of those passages, I would urge you to be very careful with the submission caveat. If you are teaching, say, Ephesians 5: “wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord,” I would just as well say, don’t teach the exception to that command when you are teaching that passage. Or at most give very, very brief pause to it. Just some things to think about that lead me to that conclusion:

• The exception is not the point of “wives, submit to your husbands.” If you want to teach the point of the passage, teach men and women what submission looks like, not what it does NOT look like! I cannot stress this enough. Christians (at least in the West) seem to have a harder time understanding what submission looks like. If anything, we need to swing the pendulum right now to help Christians submit. They do not need help thinking about what resistance looks like.
• Obeying God rather than man is so obvious most of the time that it does not even need to be said.
• If a woman sins against God because her husband told her to and she has the attitude, “God, you made him leader over me, so it’s not my fault,” what you probably have is a woman who wanted to sin, not a woman who wanted to submit to her husband.
• Sadly, in a fallen world, sometimes women must follow their husband into sin. Sarah obeyed Abraham (1 Peter 3.5-6), and two of the ways she obeyed him in Genesis was to be an adulteress (Genesis 12) and to be willing to be an adulteress again (Genesis 20). In our day, this is simply a case by case thing where you need the help of pastors to think through this. One example: if a non-Christian husband says, “skip church today, let’s go have fun.” It would be a sin for that woman to forsake the assembly, but she might follow in order to keep peace, be submissive, perhaps win her husband over without a word. The godly woman hates missing worship, missing gospel preaching, missing the Lord’s Supper, missing fellowship and prayer with the saints, missing the name of Christ being exalted publicly, yet out of submission to the Lord, she could submit to her husband.
• Most cases where women are wanting to resist a husband’s authority are not that black and white, in which case, submission should be the default. What it probably amounts to in most cases is not that a woman wants to please the Lord, but that she simply does not want to submit, which ultimately means she does not want to please the Lord.

Again, these apply to any authority-submission relationship. Just some things to think about. Thankfully, perfect submission does not save, only Jesus, the perfectly Submissive One, does that!

Do not ever permit women to teach men

“I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man.” (1 Timothy 2.12) That verse makes us unpopular. I do not permit women to teach men at our church. Ever.

That makes me unpopular even among complementarian churches. The response to that is often something along the lines of, “Well, do you let women talk in a small group?” or “Would you let women teach children?” or “What about Priscilla and Aquila?” All those questions miss the point of 1 Timothy.

Our fallen minds often respond to that verse with “well, what can women do?” Figuring out what women can do is not the point of 1 Timothy 2.12! The point of this verse is to tell us exactly what a woman must not do, namely, teach men.

I suspect the reason it makes us uncomfortable is because we do not understand what the teaching function of the church is. In our culture, we are so used to seeing someone go in front of the church, open up their bible, explain what they think it means, and explain how it applies. And as they do that, we are thinking to ourselves, “I like that. I agree with that. I do not agree with that. That’s not what I was taught growing up. He’s a good teacher. He’s a not-so-good teacher.” We are so used to not submitting to the teacher!

But we are supposed to obey our leaders and submit to them. Not many of us are supposed to become teachers in the church because it is such a weighty task. Anyone who teaches in the church is supposed to have the crowd hanging on their every word and saying, “yes, feed me, I want to yield to your teaching.”

Many Christians in America are so used to being their own sole authority in interpreting the bible. We have no concept of submitting to the bible teacher. The teaching office is so low in our minds that it makes us think, “why can’t a woman do that?”

But Paul knows the authority that opening up the Word for people brings. So, in that light, Paul did not, I do not, and you should not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over men. Ever. Thank God that women are saved through childbearing, not by being masculine.

Pay no attention to statistics

I am a sucker for stats. Statistics are actually the biggest reason I like watching sports. But I think we are all suckers for stats. And I want to urge you to stop listening to stats. Listen to God’s Word. Pay no attention to stats. Pay attention to Christ.

Preachers use stats all the time to “wow” people: 80% of church kids fall away from the faith. 50% of Christian marriages end in divorce. [fill in the blank]% of evangelicals do not believe in eternal hell, the exclusivity of Christ, the inerrancy of the bible, etc. And no matter how many times you challenge Barna statistics, the most robust, Reformed, conservative, Bible-believing Christians will still say, “yeah, but…”

Look, I know that you can believe statistics and TOTALLY still believe God’s Word, but I just want to say that statistics are not helpful. At all. Yesterday, I heard this stat: 40% of Christians struggle with sexual addiction. The presenter’s conclusion: therefore, you need to address this with your church, AND, since these are all church-goers, clearly, the gospel is not enough to help sexual addicts.

Here are several reasons statistics are not helpful:

• how many people were actually surveyed, and how do you know that means the rest of the world is the same? Was it 100 people? 1000 people? 10,000 people (that would be impressive, but I wouldn’t believe you, and it still is only 10,000)? Did you survey anyone at my church? The church down the road? At the mall? In an email? Did everyone respond? What in the world does 40% mean!!!!!
• what does “Christian” mean to those who asked the question, and to those who answered the question?
• how many of these “Christians” go to a church, a healthy church (which leads to all kinds of issues regarding the spectrum of church health)?
• how do you know everyone is telling the truth on an issue that the “experts” say is so shameful?
• what do you mean by “addiction”?

More importantly:

• statistics do not have anything to do with the person coming to me for help
• every single “statistic” is a person, made in the image of God, yet made intricately unique by God. None have the same DNA, none have the same parents, teachers, friends, pastors, etc. growing up. None have watched the same movies, read the same books, or memorized the same verses. Even if two people got remotely close in any of these categories, they are still two different people with different brains and personalities and thoughts and emotions. Every person must be handled with individual, specific, loving, gospel-centered care. In this light, statistics are at best misleading (tends to a cookie-cutter approach to helping people)
• even if all statistics were true, if every “expert” out there was accurate in all their observations, if everything psychologists and psychiatrists and therapists and counselors and physicians and authors and professors said was true about the problems in the world, the gospel is still the answer for the person sitting in front of me.

Let us simply trust in Christ and His good news.