We Cannot Stop Speaking

But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward (Heb 10:32-35).

Although a bit of a departure from our normal fare at The Prostrate Calvinist, we have been unable to overlook Franklin Graham's purported comments in China:

While some Christian groups have said they plan to proselytize during the August games, Graham said he was against that because Chinese law does not permit such actions. "I would not support any illegal activity at all," Graham said.

- Associated Press, "No Missionary Work During Beijing Olympics"

It appears that Graham hopes appeasing the Chinese government will garner official support for evangelistic work in the future, for he was also quoted as saying, "I'm not here to condemn, I'm here to work with them and help to build better bridges of understanding between Christians and government." Assuming these reports are accurate, Graham, on behalf of American evangelicals, has communicated much to the Chinese church and the rest of the world:

Suffering for the Gospel is a fool's errand. Yet, the Scripture would have us

Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves also are in the body (Heb 13:3).

The persecuted church in China has been suffering shackles, bleeding, and dying at the hands of their government for generations. To these saints, Graham has said, in effect, that we prosperous, comfortable, and influential American evangelicals do not suffer with you and that your disobedience to the atheistic government of China is unwise. May the Lord save His people from "political savvy."

Spiritual ends are achieved by worldly means. Graham has betrayed a common misconception in American evangelicalism, that we achieve influence and progress by pleasing the world. Paul reminded the Corinthians of being enamored by the unbeliever's applause long ago:

Yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom, however, not of this age nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away; but we speak God's wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory; the wisdom which none of the rulers of this age has understood; for if they had understood it they would not have crucified the Lord of glory (I Cor 2:6-8).

Paul goes on to say that the world is completely unable to understand the message of the cross apart from God's Spirit (v. 14). Spiritual ends are achieved spiritually, that is, by the illumination of God's Spirit. Christians are therefore called to be disciples, not diplomats.

Christ is not so glorious and all-powerful as being worth our very lives. Probably most egregious of all, is the insinuation that our hope and comfort lay in smooth relationships with the powers of this world. When Christians speak and act as though submitting to Christ is negotiable when faced with loss of life and limb, they falsely testify to the supremacy of Christ and communicate an impotent Gospel of a weak hope that is not worth inconvenience, let alone death. In contrast, Paul declared:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of His body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions (Col 1:24).

But I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God (Acts 20:24).

"I rejoice in my sufferings"? "I do not consider my life of any account as dear to myself"? The sweetness and surpassing hope of Jesus Christ is broadcast to the watching world when His followers joyfully suffer for His name. This is why Tertullian wrote,"the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.”

Although such circumstances try even the most faithful, God has not left us without guidance in responding to state-sponsored persecution or government restrictions on proclaiming the message of His Son. The Apostles Peter and John replied to such prohibitions by answering,

'Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard' (Acts 4:19-20)

And,

'We must obey God rather than men' (Acts 5:29).

And they responded to suffering at the hands of their leaders by

…rejoicing that they had been considered worthy to suffer shame for His name. And every day, in the temple and from house to house, they kept right on teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ (Acts 5:41-42)

And they prayed in the midst of state-sponsored persecution,

'And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and grant that Your bond-servants may speak Your word with all confidence' (Acts 4:29)

It is therefore my sincere prayer that, if these reports are true, the Lord would lead Franklin Graham to repent and to publicly recant. May all who follow Christ remember the persecuted church, as though suffering with them, for the cause of the Gospel, the sake of the Church, and the glory of Christ.

He Will Judge Rightly

For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him. Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life (John 5:22-24).

... He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead (Acts 17:31).

Yesterday, in the Lord's Day gathering, my pastor concluded his exposition of the illegal trial of Jesus in Luke 22:63-71. Quite possibly the most stirring remark was his final comments on the reality of Jesus' lordship amidst such a miscarriage of justice:

Judges who are criminals, judged as a criminal the One who will judge them. Those who judged Him are even now suffering eternal judgment in Hell. Everyone who judges Him wrongly will suffer the same penalty. Judge Him rightly, for He will judge you rightly.

- John MacArthur, "Perverted Justice," 27 April 2008.

What an oft forgotten dimension of Solus Christus that need infuse our own faith and our evangelism! Salvation is found in no one or nowhere else, than union with Christ alone through faith. Yet, I am so desperate for salvation because there is judgment in no one else. He will judge rightly.

Stand in Marked Contrast

... according to the glorious gospel of the blessed God, with which I have been entrusted (I Tim 1:11).

The Reformation was not merely a tempest in a teacup. Jerome once said that when he read the letters of the apostle Paul, he could hear thunder. That same thunder reverberates through the writings of the reformers as well. Contemporary theologians would do well to listen afresh to the message of these courageous Christians who defied emperors and popes, kings and city councils because their consciences were captive to the Word of God. Their gospel of the free grace of Almighty God, the Lord God Sabaoth, as Luther's great hymn put it, and their emphasis on the centrality and finality of Jesus Christ stand in marked contrast to the attenuated, transcendence-starved theologies which dominate the current scene.

- Timothy George, The Theology of the Reformers

Sola Scriptura. Sola Fide. Sola Gratia. Solus Christus. Soli Deo Gloria. They are not just cute Latin phrases, they are a well of transcendence and significance. But drink carefully... they will water a life of marked contrast.

For One Great Reason

For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit (I Pet 3:18).

And one final comment from Piper on the ultimate goal of our risen Savior:

Until the gospel events of Good Friday and Easter and the gospel promises of justification and eternal life lead you to behold and embrace God himself as your highest joy, you have not embraced the gospel of God. You have embraced some of his gifts. You have rejoiced over some of his rewards. You have marveled at some of his miracles. But you have not yet been awakened to why the gifts, the rewards, and the miracles have come. They have come for one great reason: that you might behold forever the glory of God in Christ, and by beholding become the kind of person who delights in God above all things, and by delighting display his supreme beauty and worth with ever-increasing brightness and bliss forever.

- John Piper, God is the Gospel, 37-38.

Risen from the grave to bring us to God. Happy Resurrection Day!

The King Would Not Rule

... if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain (I Cor 15:14).

To assist your celebration and worship of the resurrected Christ this weekend, another comment from Piper, but dealing with the implications of the resurrection. Tomorrow, we will move past the ellipsis to uncover the purpose of the resurrection.

But there would be no gospel if Jesus had stayed dead… The King would not rule over a ransomed people if he were not raised from the dead. And if the King of kings is not ruling, there is no gospel. Jesus made clear that he would rise from the dead [cf. Matt 12:40; Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:34; John 2:19], and Paul made clear that this was an essential part of the gospel: “Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, the offspring of David, as preached in my gospel” (2 Tim 2:8). Therefore, the living God, the Creator, the King of the universe has come in his Son, Jesus the Messiah, and has died for our sins and has been raised from the dead. All this is the gospel...

- John Piper, God is the Gospel, 29-30

The Means and the End

... whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, I say, of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus (Rom 3:25-26).

Christ is therefore both the means and the end of God's purpose in the universe. Without his work, that end to reveal the fullness of the glory of God for the enjoyment of God's people would not have happened. And in that very means-work he became the end—the one who forever and ever will be the focus of our worship as we spend eternity seeing and savoring more and more of what he revealed of God when he became a curse for us. Jesus is the end for which the universe was made, and the means that makes that end possible to enjoy.

- John Piper, "A Good Friday Meditation"

Today our worship is to be focused on the only One worthy of worship! He was obedient to death so that God might be both just and the Justifier... He thought of Him above all.

No Publicity Necessary

I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth (I Cor 3:6-7).

We're the New Calvinists. No, the Reformed Evangelicals. No, no, the Classic Christians.

Instead of attempting to form new alliances and organizations, we need to discern what God is doing. His work will last for eternity. It is one of the brightest hopes in the United States at the present time that gospel preachers, from different denominational backgrounds, are being spontaneously drawn together in a common concern to advance the cause of Christ. This cause does not need new labels or structures; most of all it needs the anointing of the Spirit, more prayer, love, and humility. Announcements of success, or satisfaction with numbers, are to be feared rather than sought. God’s work needs no publicity. A true advance and recovery will be marked by the sense of weakness and need which gives all glory to God. Let us not stop short of seeking a real spiritual awakening!

- Iain Murray, "A Senior Saint on Unity," in 9Marks eJournal 5/2 (Mar/April 2008).

We serve the sovereign and working King until He returns... truth happens.

Dare to be a Sinner

Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another (Eph 4:25).

The most experienced psychologist or observer of human nature knows infinitely less of the human heart than the simplest Christian who lives beneath the Cross of Jesus. The greatest psychological insight, ability, and experience cannot grasp this one thing: what sin is. Worldly wisdom knows what distress and weakness and failure are, but it does not know the godlessness of men. And so it also does not know that man is destroyed only by his sin and can be healed only by forgiveness. Only the Christian knows this.

In the presence of a psychiatrist I can only be a sick man; in the presence of a Christian brother I can dare to be a sinner. The psychiatrist must first search my heart and yet he never plumbs its ultimate depth. The Christian brother knows when I come to him: here is a sinner like myself, a godless man who wants to confess and yearns for God's forgiveness. The psychiatrist views me as if there were no God. The brother views me as I am before the judging and merciful God in the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is not lack of psychological knowledge but lack of love for the crucified Jesus Christ that makes us so poor and inefficient in brotherly confession.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, 118-19; emphasis added.

Governing, Guiding, and Refreshing

He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything (Col 1:18).

Since Christ is the Head of the Church, it is His Word that rules Christians. Scripture’s authority is as present and active as if the Lord Jesus Himself should open the skies and audibly direct us.

The rule of Christ is made effective by his Spirit, through whom he illumines our understanding of his Word, and gives us wisdom to apply it… The rule of Christ through his Word and Spirit is not the dead hand of human tradition reaching from the past. Rather, by his living truth and the abiding presence of his Spirit the Lord governs, guides and refreshes his people.

- Edmund Clowney, The Church, 202-03.

We only follow Christ when we are obedient to Scripture and we only honor Christ when we are faithful to Scripture. For us to follow any other authority or to look to any other source for direction, is nothing less than mutiny against our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Every Self-Respecting Calvinist...

loves the local church!

To the Church, under God, we owe it that we are ‘born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible (1 Pet 1:23),’ and from her we obtain the milk and the food by which we are afterwards nourished. Such are the reasons why the Church is called the mother of believers.

- John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles of Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, 140-41

Have you called your mother lately?

Solus Christus

And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

It is of the gravest importance to keep clearly before our and others' minds and hearts the great fact that in Christ alone is there salvation. In Christ alone; and that in both sense of the word "alone." Not only can there be no salvation except in him; but in him is all that can be needed for salvation. Jesus only!

Paul determined to know nothing in Corinth but Jesus Christ and him as crucified. The only saving gospel is to find in him all. There needs no supplement. To depend on aught else - aught else, however small it may seem - along with him is as truly to lose him as to depend on aught else instead of him.

The solemn words of Paul, 'Behold I, Paul, say unto you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will profit you nothing,' have their multiform application in these modern times. And it behooves us so to live and so to preach, today, that we can say now, as he said then, that our only trust and our only glory is in the cross of Jesus Christ; and that we find in him and his work alone the beginning and the middle and the end of salvation. He is not only the author but also the finisher of our faith.

- B.B. Warfield, "The Dogmatic Spirit"