Loving The Truth is Often Bittersweet
“Part and parcel with being made a new creature in Jesus Christ is love for the truth.”
This is something that I don’t write about enough. Loving the truth and upholding the truth can be a rough life. I don’t think about them much, but when I do in a thoughtful way I find myself in tears; those who have lost almost everything over truth. I feel their pain when I read their emails and published articles. We are social creatures and losing all of your friends is not a pleasant experience. It causes us to long for the day when we will gaze upon the personification of truth among enumerable truth lovers.
Today this hits close to home. Someone very dear to me is once again faced with a choice: the comfort of compromise, or standing by the truth at all cost. The Bible has much to say about this. Let me repeat that another way: God has strong opinions about this issue.
2 Corinthians 10:5 – We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, 6 being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.
Truth is God’s opinion about what makes the world He created tick, and apparently, those who know more about life than He does are very annoying to Him. Equally annoying to Him is the idea that His truth is ambiguous and not near to all. Listen to what Moses had to say about that:
Deuteronomy 30:11 – “For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? ‘ 13 Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it? ‘ 14 But the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. 16 If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules, then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. 17 But if your heart turns away, and you will not hear, but are drawn away to worship other gods and serve them, 18 I declare to you today, that you shall surely perish.
God doesn’t appreciate the implication that His truth is not near to us—that it is ambiguous and difficult to ascertain—that we need orthodoxy from a host of mystic academics. No, and by the way, we can’t blame those who we chose to listen to in the end; the truth is near to all of us—we are responsible for the sum and substance of our own lives.
Part and parcel with being made a new creature in Jesus Christ is love for the truth. The apostle Paul, in his apocalyptic letter to the Thessalonians, warned that those who perish have not “received the love of the truth.” Receiving this love also comes part and parcel with an attitude: read about Daniel’s three friends and the bunch in Hebrews 11.
This attitude might also be influenced by something believers know about God. When God made a covenant with Israel as stipulated in the Book of the Covenant, and they broke it with defiant flare while Moses was on Mt. Sinai receiving the “tablets of the testimony,” we observe the following scene when Moses returned:
Exodus 32:25 – And when Moses saw that the people had broken loose (for Aaron had let them break loose, to the derision of their enemies), 26 then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the Lord’s side? Come to me.” And all the sons of Levi gathered around him. 27 And he said to them, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel, ‘Put your sword on your side each of you, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and each of you kill his brother and his companion and his neighbor.’” 28 And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses. And that day about three thousand men of the people fell. 29 And Moses said, “Today you have been ordained for the service of the Lord, each one at the cost of his son and of his brother, so that he might bestow a blessing upon you this day.”
Christ said God’s word is truth, and ONLY truth sanctifies (John 17:17). Sanctification is separation from the world, and hence, when separation occurs—it is often difficult to distinguish naive Christians from worldly false confessors. A stand for the truth is seen as fanaticism. Perhaps rock legend Alice Cooper said it best:
Drinking beer is easy. Trashing your hotel room is easy. But being a Christian, that’s a tough call. That’s real rebellion!
paul
Heretic David Platt: Don’t Go to Hell Their Way; Go to Hell My Way
Moses: The anti-Calvin
“….which doesn’t see justification as a finished work that cannot be affected by sanctification.”
This may be a shock to you, but heretic David Platt has a new book out. Is anybody keeping a running score on this? Who is ahead? I think John Piper has written about 600 books; where does Platt measure up to that? Is Kevin DeYoung like second or third? The promotional trailer follows after my commentary. In the classic Reformed either/or metaphysical interpretive prism, he insinuates that you either know what he knows about salvation, or you are one of those minions of the present Dark Age of Synergistic Sanctification. And you also think people are saved by the mindless citation of a prayer. If you don’t believe what he believes—that’s you. You believe that you have led someone to Christ just because you got them to recite a prayer.
That’s what Platt means by Follow Me. “Follow me” really means meditating on what Jesus has done rather than anything that we do resulting in Christ’s life and obedience being imputed as a substitute for our obedience in sanctification. Emptying ourselves means to look at all of life as a way to make us smaller and the cross bigger. Got rape? Awesome! What could be more useful in humbling us in the death we deserve and being resurrected by the fruits of Jesus? And not to mention forgiving our rapist to show the world that we forgive the way Jesus forgave us. We are all just sinners saved by grace and if not for the mercy of Jesus—I would also be a rapist, so who am I to judge? Point being: don’t be deceived into thinking that Platt really believes that following Jesus means learn and do. He means meditate and watch. That’s how we get to heaven by faith alone in sanctification; which doesn’t see justification as a finished work that cannot be affected by sanctification.
And that’s ironic because he cites Matthew 7:21-23 to make his point. But what is the context of that text? Those who don’t learn and practice have houses built on sand and no assurance of salvation; ie., what Platt propogates. Learning, and “jumping from the command to obedience” is…. “obeying in our own efforts.” Following Jesus really means learn and watch.
Him and is heretic book-writing buddies can deny this all they want to, but it’s called: “the imperative command is grounded in the indicative event.” It’s a Reformed tradition, and invites the words, “Depart from me you who work anomia (anti-law [those who don’t learn and do]), for I never knew you.
Moses told us how to choose life or death. Or, how to choose a house built on sand or a house built on a rock. Once splattered with blood, the word is near to us, and in us, and not too difficult for us to obey. This is the opposite of the “centrality of the objective gospel outside of us.” The word is NOT in us, and it is most certainly TOO HARD for us to obey—Jesus must do it for us, or you are not living by faith alone.
So, don’t go to hell the way Biblicists supposedly go to hell—go to hell David Platt’s way.
paul
Bible as Story? Have We Lost our Minds?
Here at the Potter’s House we do family readings. Right now, we are reading through the novel, The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare. The book is what we call a historical novel. These are fictional books that attempt to convey the experience of historical facts. Historical novels attempt to put you into the historical event experientially. So, historical novels aren’t “just facts,” but attempt to enable you to understand how people in said historical event experienced it.
This is done well in Speare’s Blackbird Pond. You feel Kit’s angst as she peruses the Puritan shoreline of America for the first time. She senses the abysmal aura as set against the colorful structures in Barbados. And for anybody who knows Puritan history, Kit’s suspicions that something is culturally array in the new land is truly chilling. You want to say, “Run!” But, of course, it’s just a story. Historical novels “put you in the story.” The counterpart is academic history which focuses on facts and is not concerned with personal experience.
Vestiges of the concept can be found in mythology and Plato’s concept of Genre which Aristotle and others helped him develop. The concept was integrated into biblical hermeneutics circa 180AD. The idea of Bible as historical narrative was eventually dubbed Biblical Theology by Johann Philipp Gabler (circa 1785) and further developed by Geerhardus Vos in the 19th century. It was known as Redemptive Historical Hermeneutics in the Dutch Reformed churches during the 1940’s. In the secular realm the debate rages as to which approach educates more effectively (http://goo.gl/zo7zp).
And here we are today. The propagation of Bible as a history narrative is in Blitzkrieg mode. The Bible is not to be researched grammatically, but is to be approached like a novel; our goal is to enter into the “unfolding drama of God’s redemptive story.” Those are the words that are actually used. With any novel, it is the writer’s burden to draw the reader into the plot; in this case, the Holy Spirit. All that is necessary is to approach the Bible as gospel narrative, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest. In fact, many Reformed teachers assert that the Holy Spirit will not teach unless you are reading your Bible as a gospel narrative:
That which makes the Bible the Bible is the gospel. That which makes the Bible the Word of God is its witness to Christ. When the Spirit bears witness to our hearts of the truth of the Bible, this is an internal witness concerning the truth of the gospel. We need to be apprehended by the Spirit, who lives in the gospel, and then judge all things by that Spirit even the letter of Scripture.
I want you to feel the truth and depth and wonder that awaits your lifelong labor of love in pondering the inexhaustible portraits of Jesus given us by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Nothing can raise those who are spiritually dead or continually give life to Christ’s flock but the Spirit working through the gospel. When this happens (not just once, but every time we encounter the gospel afresh), the Spirit progressively transforms us into Christ’s image (Paul Dohse: The Truth About New Calvinism pp. 99, 100).
Recently, I made some observations about Wade Burleson’s blog, Istoria Ministries:
“If the Bible is God’s revelation to man, and it is, be sure that he will also reveal how he wants his word to be interpreted. Fact is, the Bible has built-in rules for interpretation throughout. ANY rules of interpretation for a text must be validated by the Bible itself. So, what about Bible as story or narrative? After an exhaustive study on what the Bible would state about this interpretive model, it begs the question: where is it?”
On that note, let’s start with a blog named “Istoria Ministries” by Reformed teacher/pastor Wade Burleson. The subtitle reads as follows:
Istoria is a Greek word that can be translated as both story and history. Istoria Ministries, led by Wade and Rachelle Burleson, helps people experience the life transforming power of Jesus Christ so that their story may become part of His story.
Burleson is right, it is a Greek word, but is it in the Greek New Testament? After hours of research, I cannot find it anywhere. In fact, Hebrew or Greek canon words that project the English idea of history, narrative, or story are either extremely scarce or nonexistent. The closest idea is the word “parable” which is a story that helps define truth. It’s a teaching tool. But in every case where a parable is implemented as a teaching method, the Bible plainly introduces it as such beforehand. It doesn’t appear that parables in the Bible are meant to be stories that explain the story.”
The next day, Burleson changed the subtitle to the blog as follows:
“I went to Jerusalem to become acquainted (Greek: istoria) with Cephas.” Paul’s words in Galatians 1:18.
Only thing is, the word is not “istoria,” it is “historeo.” Istoria seems to be a word that, in fact, can be interpreted as story and history both, but is primarily a Greek word of contemporary origin. Not only that, according to Spiros Zodhiates, historeo appears in the Greek New Testament ONCE; specifically, the verse Burleson cites in his revised subtitle. A Strongs number search with Olive Tree software confirms such as well.
We don’t obey novels. We don’t obey narratives. We don’t obey stories. And the Lord wants us to experience what we learn in the Bible by applying it to our lives (James 1:25). Parables in the Bible are teaching tools that aid us in understanding the primary points—a history parable is not the sole interpretive genre that makes the Bible what it is.
You do not build a life on a rock by reading novels—you do it by putting what the Lord teaches into practice (Matthew 7:24). If Christ wanted us to read “these words of mine” as a story why would He have not plainly said so? If we live by the redemption story, why wouldn’t Christ plainly state that instead of, “every word that comes from the mouth of God?” If it’s a story, why would Christ call it “all that I have commanded”?
Have we lost our minds?
paul
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