February 23, 2010: Go Ahead, Offend Me. I Can Take It.
A good friend told me that last week's essay was offensive, and I very much appreciated her candid evaluation. Her response did not offend me in the least. I didn't agree with it, but I was not offended by it. It is important to distinguish between "heartily disagree with" and "be offended by".
In today's hyper-sensitive climate, I wonder how much good teaching has been self-censored and muted by the fear that "this might offend somebody." Many pastors know the temptation, yield to it, and leave important truths unsaid. An elder once told me that the pastor of his church confided to him that he never preached from the Bible's passages on divorce because "There are so many divorced people in my congregation" who might take offense. Oh come on. To that pastor and all such pulpit cowards I say: "If you are that afraid of offending people, resign from the ministry. When you don the clerical collar you acknowledge a sacred calling to declare the full counsel of the Word of God no matter whose feelings get hurt." And if that's offensive, well, so be it.
Everyone should have the experience of getting completely upended by someone who says, "You believe A. That's wrong, you ought to believe B." Or perhaps, "You are doing A, which is a big mistake. Do B instead." Such reproofs and rebuttals aimed at me personally have marked many a blessed turning point in my life and theology, and I'm grateful for people who spoke their convictions plainly without beating around the bush to spare my feelings.
The other day I read aloud to my wife a great snippet from a letter by Joy Gresham where she referred to some correspondence she had had with C. S. Lewis (who later became her husband). She wrote,
Just got a letter from Lewis in the mail. I think I told you I'd raised an argument or two on some points? Lord, he knocked my props out from under me unerringly; one shot to a pigeon. I haven't a scrap of my case left. And, what's more, I've seldom enjoyed anything more. Being disposed of so neatly by a master of debate, all fair and square - it seems to be one of the great pleasures of life, though I'd never have suspected it in my arrogant youth. I suppose it's unfair tricks of argument that leave wounds. But after the sort of thing that Lewis does, what I feel is a craftsman's joy at the sight of a superior performance.
I exclaimed to Lisa, "That's what I want! I want someone to LEWIS me!" What a great joy to have the experience of being proved wrong, to be shown that there is a new thought I must embrace or a new conviction I must acquire. Sure, the change would be hard, but the alternative - permanent dread stasis in all thought and deed - would be even harder. I'd hate that.
In The Chronicles of Narnia, the Dufflepuds never say anything anybody could disagree with. Their conversation consists of statements like "Getting dark now; always does at night," and, "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?" They neither offend nor inform, and no one under their kind tutelage would ever advance far. But Aslan the Lion - a figure of Christ - provokes changes of heart and mind with words that are deep and strong and terrible and right. You should read all those books.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
February 16, 2010: No Holy Communion Until You Have Been Baptized!
I believe I shocked an adult Sunday School class last week by mentioning an ancient and standard practice of the Christian church that has been so neglected in North American evangelicalism that its re-introduction prompts bewilderment and protest. I refer to the policy of restricting the Lord's Supper to baptized believers.
The key word is baptized. I'm pretty sure that all Christian traditions agree that only believers should eat the bread and drink the cup. If an atheist or a Muslim came to a Eucharist celebration and said, "I want to participate in this ritual even though I don't accept Christianity," I'd like to think that he would be told - politely but firmly - "No, I'm afraid that would not be appropriate." In the Lord's Supper we "proclaim the Lord's death till he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26), that is, we confess till the Parousia our faith that Jesus died to save us. For an unbeliever to announce that would be a lie. We also take the elements in order to "remember Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:24), that is, we call to mind and give thanks for his blessed sacrifice on our behalf. No unbeliever can "remember Christ" this way. We also "examine ourselves" before partaking (1 Corinthians 11:28), and any unbeliever's honest self-examination would lead him to acknowledge that, since he disbelieves the Christian faith, it would not be right to make a public proclamation of it.
So why not just leave it at that? Believers and believers only should partake of holy communion, and whether you've been baptized in addition to that - as an external sign of internal belief - shouldn't make any difference. Faith, not the water ritual that expresses faith, should (alone) qualify you for participation in holy communion.
Here's the problem with that.
First of all, the New Testament never views baptism as an option for Christian believers. It is a commandment. Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize (Matthew 28:19), and when Peter first preached the gospel, he commanded the crowd to "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). Those who believed the gospel obeyed the command, and 3,000 were baptized that day (verse 41).
I have often felt that the distinction between "option" and "commandment" is not adequately appreciated in some Christian circles. An example may help. In Christianity, marriage is an option. Though Jesus extols singlehood in Matthew 19:12, and Paul favors it in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, we are also taught that a person who marries "has not sinned" (1 Corinthians 7:28,36), and Paul positively excoriates those who forbid marriage (1 Timothy 4:3). So the choice between marriage and singlehood is completely up to you. However, the choice between faithfulness and adultery (or chastity and fornication) is most certainly not up to you. There are commandments about those things (e.g. Exodus 20:14 and Hebrews 13:4). So, while a man does not defy God when he exercises his option to marry, he does defy God when he sleeps around with people he is not married to.
Baptism, for the Christian believer, is not like the option of singlehood or marriage. It is like the commandment of chastity or faithfulness. To be baptized is to obey God, and to refuse to be baptized is to disobey. If a professing believer chooses to remain in a state of unbaptism, he must be made aware that what he is doing is raising a fist of defiance in the face of the Almighty. Someone will say, "Oh, I never viewed my refusal to be baptized as an act of defiance." Well, start viewing it that way. Repent and be baptized. How long will it take for you to submit to this commandment of God?
In the Bible, it never takes believers any time at all to obey the command to be baptized. That is my second point. Baptism is indissolubly and immediately linked to the grace of conversion. Read the book of Acts, and you will see that, without exception, every convert gets baptized on the same day the gospel is explained to him and he responds in faith. People get baptized in a ditch by the side of the road, or in the middle of the night, or before they resume eating after a 3-day fast. There is no such thing in the New Testament as an unbaptized believer!
The saved-but-unbaptized thief on the cross (Luke 23:40-43), frequently invoked as an exception, really isn't one. I am grateful to professor Murray Harris for explaining this in a lecture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Harris pointed out that the thief next to Jesus could not have undergone Christian baptism even if he had come down from the cross and been dunked in a pool before being re-crucified. That is because, in Christian baptism, we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4). When Jesus saved the penitent thief, he himself had not yet died and risen again. So Christian baptism didn't exist yet. There was only the baptism of John (see Acts 19:3-5). Therefore the generalization holds without exception: all Christian believers in the Bible undergo baptism immediately upon conversion. The only legitimate reason for not getting baptized, then, is because you are not yet a believer.
This understanding of baptism, which I came to late in life - in my 30s, in seminary - helped me to understand the early church's abhorrence of serving communion to the unbaptized. For example, the Didache (possibly the earliest non-canonical epistle we have, dating to the first century) reads in chapter 9 verse 5: "But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord." The writer(s) of the Didache understood something we have lost: Christian people get baptized - all of them do, right away. To serve holy communion to an unbaptized person is to serve it to someone who, for whatever reason, has not yet acknowledged Christ.
On a personal note, I pulled aside Dr. D. A. Carson in the hall at Trinity one day and asked him if a person must be baptized before being permitted to partake of the Lord's Supper, and he responded with enthusiasm, "Yes! Absolutely!" It was a short conversation, but I took the point. (Please excuse my name-dropping, because, as some of you know, Carson may be the top New Testament scholar in the world, literally, so I guess what I'm saying here is that if you disagree with me you're disagreeing with Carson, and he's so smart it's not even funny.)
On an even more personal note, I myself was a "spiritual fornicator" in this matter for several years because I just didn't know it was wrong to take communion before getting baptized. (I started partaking around 12, I think, and got baptized at 15.) I now call that spiritual fornication because it is so perfectly analogous to the physical kind. Baptism is like exchanging wedding vows, and the Lord's Supper is like sex. In both cases you should do the first thing before you do the second thing. Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli famously compared baptism to a wedding ring: just as a ring identifies you as a spouse, so baptism identifies you as a Christian. We can go further: just as the ring should go on your finger on the day you get married, and be in place before you begin "communing" with your husband or wife, so also the waters of baptism should douse your body on the day you profess faith in Christ, and before you begin to engage in holy communion with him and the people of God.
I believe I shocked an adult Sunday School class last week by mentioning an ancient and standard practice of the Christian church that has been so neglected in North American evangelicalism that its re-introduction prompts bewilderment and protest. I refer to the policy of restricting the Lord's Supper to baptized believers.
The key word is baptized. I'm pretty sure that all Christian traditions agree that only believers should eat the bread and drink the cup. If an atheist or a Muslim came to a Eucharist celebration and said, "I want to participate in this ritual even though I don't accept Christianity," I'd like to think that he would be told - politely but firmly - "No, I'm afraid that would not be appropriate." In the Lord's Supper we "proclaim the Lord's death till he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26), that is, we confess till the Parousia our faith that Jesus died to save us. For an unbeliever to announce that would be a lie. We also take the elements in order to "remember Christ" (1 Corinthians 11:24), that is, we call to mind and give thanks for his blessed sacrifice on our behalf. No unbeliever can "remember Christ" this way. We also "examine ourselves" before partaking (1 Corinthians 11:28), and any unbeliever's honest self-examination would lead him to acknowledge that, since he disbelieves the Christian faith, it would not be right to make a public proclamation of it.
So why not just leave it at that? Believers and believers only should partake of holy communion, and whether you've been baptized in addition to that - as an external sign of internal belief - shouldn't make any difference. Faith, not the water ritual that expresses faith, should (alone) qualify you for participation in holy communion.
Here's the problem with that.
First of all, the New Testament never views baptism as an option for Christian believers. It is a commandment. Jesus commanded his disciples to baptize (Matthew 28:19), and when Peter first preached the gospel, he commanded the crowd to "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins" (Acts 2:38). Those who believed the gospel obeyed the command, and 3,000 were baptized that day (verse 41).
I have often felt that the distinction between "option" and "commandment" is not adequately appreciated in some Christian circles. An example may help. In Christianity, marriage is an option. Though Jesus extols singlehood in Matthew 19:12, and Paul favors it in 1 Corinthians 7:32-35, we are also taught that a person who marries "has not sinned" (1 Corinthians 7:28,36), and Paul positively excoriates those who forbid marriage (1 Timothy 4:3). So the choice between marriage and singlehood is completely up to you. However, the choice between faithfulness and adultery (or chastity and fornication) is most certainly not up to you. There are commandments about those things (e.g. Exodus 20:14 and Hebrews 13:4). So, while a man does not defy God when he exercises his option to marry, he does defy God when he sleeps around with people he is not married to.
Baptism, for the Christian believer, is not like the option of singlehood or marriage. It is like the commandment of chastity or faithfulness. To be baptized is to obey God, and to refuse to be baptized is to disobey. If a professing believer chooses to remain in a state of unbaptism, he must be made aware that what he is doing is raising a fist of defiance in the face of the Almighty. Someone will say, "Oh, I never viewed my refusal to be baptized as an act of defiance." Well, start viewing it that way. Repent and be baptized. How long will it take for you to submit to this commandment of God?
In the Bible, it never takes believers any time at all to obey the command to be baptized. That is my second point. Baptism is indissolubly and immediately linked to the grace of conversion. Read the book of Acts, and you will see that, without exception, every convert gets baptized on the same day the gospel is explained to him and he responds in faith. People get baptized in a ditch by the side of the road, or in the middle of the night, or before they resume eating after a 3-day fast. There is no such thing in the New Testament as an unbaptized believer!
The saved-but-unbaptized thief on the cross (Luke 23:40-43), frequently invoked as an exception, really isn't one. I am grateful to professor Murray Harris for explaining this in a lecture at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Harris pointed out that the thief next to Jesus could not have undergone Christian baptism even if he had come down from the cross and been dunked in a pool before being re-crucified. That is because, in Christian baptism, we are united with Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3-4). When Jesus saved the penitent thief, he himself had not yet died and risen again. So Christian baptism didn't exist yet. There was only the baptism of John (see Acts 19:3-5). Therefore the generalization holds without exception: all Christian believers in the Bible undergo baptism immediately upon conversion. The only legitimate reason for not getting baptized, then, is because you are not yet a believer.
This understanding of baptism, which I came to late in life - in my 30s, in seminary - helped me to understand the early church's abhorrence of serving communion to the unbaptized. For example, the Didache (possibly the earliest non-canonical epistle we have, dating to the first century) reads in chapter 9 verse 5: "But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist, unless they have been baptized into the name of the Lord." The writer(s) of the Didache understood something we have lost: Christian people get baptized - all of them do, right away. To serve holy communion to an unbaptized person is to serve it to someone who, for whatever reason, has not yet acknowledged Christ.
On a personal note, I pulled aside Dr. D. A. Carson in the hall at Trinity one day and asked him if a person must be baptized before being permitted to partake of the Lord's Supper, and he responded with enthusiasm, "Yes! Absolutely!" It was a short conversation, but I took the point. (Please excuse my name-dropping, because, as some of you know, Carson may be the top New Testament scholar in the world, literally, so I guess what I'm saying here is that if you disagree with me you're disagreeing with Carson, and he's so smart it's not even funny.)
On an even more personal note, I myself was a "spiritual fornicator" in this matter for several years because I just didn't know it was wrong to take communion before getting baptized. (I started partaking around 12, I think, and got baptized at 15.) I now call that spiritual fornication because it is so perfectly analogous to the physical kind. Baptism is like exchanging wedding vows, and the Lord's Supper is like sex. In both cases you should do the first thing before you do the second thing. Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli famously compared baptism to a wedding ring: just as a ring identifies you as a spouse, so baptism identifies you as a Christian. We can go further: just as the ring should go on your finger on the day you get married, and be in place before you begin "communing" with your husband or wife, so also the waters of baptism should douse your body on the day you profess faith in Christ, and before you begin to engage in holy communion with him and the people of God.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
February 2, 2010: In Praise Of Questions
Last Sunday I had the delight of staying after church for a long time discussing biblical issues with a couple who had asked me a question about a text that came up in Sunday School. I talked their ears off, and they listened with patience and grace. It was wonderful. At least, I thought it was wonderful.
I love questions. My relationship with the nicest person I've ever met started with a question. While sitting next to me at a Bible study she asked me if I understood Matthew 16:19, and that provoked me to unload a lengthy monologue. Amazingly, at the end, she was neither bored out of her skull nor looking over her shoulder at the exit sign and wishing she hadn't asked. Even more amazingly, a few months later she agreed to marry me.
When I read Tim Keller's great book The Reason For God I saw something there that stirred me to strong feelings of pastor envy. He said that for the first few years at his church in Manhattan he stayed after the worship service for three to four hours every week answering questions about the Bible and Christian faith. Three to four hours! Where did he find all those questioners, and how can I get me some? (Of course - to be fair - if I did have those questioners in my congregation they would probably plumb the depths of what I have contribute in short order and then say to themselves, "I think what I really need to do is go ask Tim Keller this question.")
Questioners make for good leaders. I once heard John MacArthur say, "If in a group of people you want to know who the leader is, he's the one asking all the questions." Instantly I realized MacArthur was right. Through questions a person gains knowledge, and without knowledge you cannot effectively lead anyone. Speaking as a born follower, I know that the person I want to follow most is the guy who knows everything.
Years ago I learned a great piece of "question wisdom" from Ken Pike, linguist extraordinaire and founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators. I love to pass it along to students. He said that as a young man at the University of Michigan in the 1940s he made up his mind that if there was ever anything he did not understand, he would ask the professor. Though shy and (by his own admission) psychologically fragile, he deliberately chose never to worry about looking like a fool when asking things that probably everybody else in the room already understood.
I adopted that same policy in all my later schooling, and you would not believe how many times fellow students came up to me after class and thanked me for verbalizing the same questions they had but were afraid to ask. (The other students, the ones who presumably wondered "Why won't that idiot shut up?", all graciously kept their complaints to themselves.)
Even Jesus asked questions: "How long has he been like this?" (Mark 9:21); "Who do people say that I am?" (Mark 8:27); "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" (John 6:5). All his questions were terrific conversation starters - except for that time he asked the Pharisees how the Messiah could be David's son (Matthew 22:45-46). That turned out to be a terrific conversation ender. In your face, Pharisees.
Aren't questions great?
Last Sunday I had the delight of staying after church for a long time discussing biblical issues with a couple who had asked me a question about a text that came up in Sunday School. I talked their ears off, and they listened with patience and grace. It was wonderful. At least, I thought it was wonderful.
I love questions. My relationship with the nicest person I've ever met started with a question. While sitting next to me at a Bible study she asked me if I understood Matthew 16:19, and that provoked me to unload a lengthy monologue. Amazingly, at the end, she was neither bored out of her skull nor looking over her shoulder at the exit sign and wishing she hadn't asked. Even more amazingly, a few months later she agreed to marry me.
When I read Tim Keller's great book The Reason For God I saw something there that stirred me to strong feelings of pastor envy. He said that for the first few years at his church in Manhattan he stayed after the worship service for three to four hours every week answering questions about the Bible and Christian faith. Three to four hours! Where did he find all those questioners, and how can I get me some? (Of course - to be fair - if I did have those questioners in my congregation they would probably plumb the depths of what I have contribute in short order and then say to themselves, "I think what I really need to do is go ask Tim Keller this question.")
Questioners make for good leaders. I once heard John MacArthur say, "If in a group of people you want to know who the leader is, he's the one asking all the questions." Instantly I realized MacArthur was right. Through questions a person gains knowledge, and without knowledge you cannot effectively lead anyone. Speaking as a born follower, I know that the person I want to follow most is the guy who knows everything.
Years ago I learned a great piece of "question wisdom" from Ken Pike, linguist extraordinaire and founding member of Wycliffe Bible Translators. I love to pass it along to students. He said that as a young man at the University of Michigan in the 1940s he made up his mind that if there was ever anything he did not understand, he would ask the professor. Though shy and (by his own admission) psychologically fragile, he deliberately chose never to worry about looking like a fool when asking things that probably everybody else in the room already understood.
I adopted that same policy in all my later schooling, and you would not believe how many times fellow students came up to me after class and thanked me for verbalizing the same questions they had but were afraid to ask. (The other students, the ones who presumably wondered "Why won't that idiot shut up?", all graciously kept their complaints to themselves.)
Even Jesus asked questions: "How long has he been like this?" (Mark 9:21); "Who do people say that I am?" (Mark 8:27); "Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?" (John 6:5). All his questions were terrific conversation starters - except for that time he asked the Pharisees how the Messiah could be David's son (Matthew 22:45-46). That turned out to be a terrific conversation ender. In your face, Pharisees.
Aren't questions great?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)