Category: Puritan

5 July, 2015

Sometimes a Light Comes On

Please read this:

Matthew 13:24–30 (ESV)

The Parable of the Weeds

²⁴He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, ²⁵but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. ²⁶So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. ²⁷And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ ²⁸He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ ²⁹But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. ³⁰Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ ”

How have you read this? How has it been taught to you? I remember this being taught in several contexts, but the gist is that evil and good people co-exist until judgement, and we cannot be too quick to give up on people. Only in the End is it known for certain whether or not a person is saved.

But this passage doesn’t teach this. Now, if I’m the only one who is surprised, maybe I just have a poor memory of what was taught when I was younger. But if not, here goes.

It is obvious from the beginning who the weeds are. There is no change from weed to wheat, and there is change of the set path of fire or barn.

This parable is about delayed judgement, not delayed knowledge. While God may turn weeds into wheat, bad seeds into good, there really is no mistaking which is which. This is reprobation on display. Is it not possible that some people are simply reprobates, who, like Pharaoh, have been chosen for God’s wrath?

Romans 9:17 (ESV)¹⁷For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”

In more times than not, a person either responds to the Gospel or hardens against it relatively early in life. Weeds are obvious.

23 April, 2015

The Gospel and Education

“The foundation of true education is the truth that man, though fallen and sinful, is made in the image of God the creator and king. Education is a core implication of the gospel truth that Jesus Christ is Lord over all the earth.”

Video by Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute for Contemporary Christianity here.

19 October, 2014

And Such WERE Some of You.

1 Corinthians 6:11 (ESV)
“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

I read long ago a comment by theologian/counsellor Jay Adams. Adams might be called the “Father of Nouthetic Counselling.” His comment was that this passage can be understood by an old joke: “When is a door not a door?” Answer, “When it is ajar.” The humour is that “ajar” sounds like “a jar,” which, of course is not at all what the door is, but in context means that the door is slightly open.

Adam’s point is that if you break it down grammatically you have this: “When is a door not a door?” Answer: “When it is something ELSE.” (i.e., “a jar”). The application to this passage becomes obvious. Paul had just listed sins in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10:

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Don’t misunderstand Paul’s intention here, by thinking that only a few sins and not explicitly naming others that only these sins are under consideration. This list is one of several Pauline lists that act as a synecdoche for a number of others.

So what Adams argues, correctly, I think, is this. “When is a (fill in the blank: unrighteous, sexually immoral, idolater, adulterers, homosexual, thief, greedy person, drunkard, reviler, swindler) not that?” Or, “When is a homosexual not a homosexual, when is a drunkard not a drunkard?” Answer: “When they are something ELSE!”

The answer is verse 11. The unrighteous becomes righteous (based on Christ’s imputed righteousness). But this is not simply to say that the adulterer becomes faithful, or the homosexual becomes heterosexual, or the drunk becomes sober; a person can be all these things and be every bit as unrighteous. There is SOMETHING ELSE.

1 Corinthians 6:11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

That “something else” is a man washed (regenerated, Titus 3:5) ,sanctified (made holy), justified (made righteous by another, and that other is Christ).

The force of the verb, “were” is that those behaviours were the customary habits of the person prior to being washed, sanctified, and justified. When one turns to Christ for salvation, these things no longer describe what a person is, but rather, what that person was.

A person who is a Christian is no longer identified by the sins of their rebellion. For this reason, we cannot encourage a Christian to identify with a sin as a part of that nature, when that nature has been killed. One might say, “I was once a drunkard,” but if one is no longer a drunkard, because they are something else, they are no drunkard. I know AA disagrees, but unless a man is found in Christ, he is simply a dry alcoholic.

We must not truncate the Gospel by leaving any part of our lives outside of the God’s justification and sanctification. We are not what we were; we are something else. This is why, to answer a question in another post, is homosexuality a salvation or holiness issue. The answer for this, and all rebellion against God, is YES.