A Christmas Meditation

Tonight we feast a holy mystery:
The uncreated Word who took on flesh
To execute his own divine decree;
A King who makes a feeding trough his crèche.
He came to make himself of no account
Before whose throne the seraphs hide their face,
And left the heavens filled with his renown
To represent his own of Adam’s race.
Our own iniquities he took upon
Himself, and bore the bitter cup of wrath
That by all rights was ours, till it was gone.
No condemnation need we fear, nor death!
          And so, with ransomed, joyful hearts, we sing
          And feast, and worship Christ, the newborn King.

Acts 29, Baptists, and Alcohol

Recently the Missouri Baptist Convention cut all ties (most notably financial ties) with a church-planting network called Acts 29. The wording of the motion was pretty strong: Staff of the Convention “will not be working with, supporting, or endorsing [Acts 29] in any manner at anytime.”

The conflict here stems from one Acts 29 church supported by the Missouri Baptist Convention having an event called “Theology at the Bottleworks.” This was a discussion group that met in a bar, and not surprisingly some members drank alcoholic beverages during the event. Also not surprisingly, this upset some Missouri Baptists, as it would many of our Baptist brothers and sisters, who tend to take a pretty hard line on the use of alcoholic beverages. As a result, the Convention has determined not to support any Acts 29 churches, including those they are already supporting financially. (This does not prevent individual churches in the Convention from supporting Acts 29 church-planting efforts.)

There are several critiques that we could make of this decision. For example, this will cut off considerable financial support to several Acts 29 churches who actually take the same view on alcohol as the Convention– and they have until January 1 to make other arrangements. But I bring it up in order to illustrate something that’s problematic: Christians sometimes make the mistake of turning a personal conviction into a sort of litmus test for orthodoxy. Now personal convictions are great, and I commend the Baptists for sticking to theirs. But we step over an important line when we begin to treat our personal convictions as though they were clear biblical truth.

The Bible simply does not forbid the moderate use of alcohol. Of course the Bible forbids drunkenness, but it does not forbid alcohol per se. So while abstaining from alcohol altogether may be a good idea for some believers for various reasons (such as a personal or family pattern of alcoholism, the cultural context in which they want to minister, etc.), it is not something that can be commanded, a requirement that some believers can place on others.

That said, a church or organization is still free to decide who it will and will not support. So my complaint with this action by the MBC (as if they asked) is not that they’ve decided not to support a given ministry, but that they’ve bypassed a whole lot of important issues where Acts 29 and the MBC agree and cut all their ties over a small area where they disagree. Acts 29 is solid on the person and work of Christ, the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, the need for evangelism and missions, and a thousand other important things. In fact, they are one of the groups leading the charge for the planting of solid, Bible-based, Gospel-preaching churches in the States. But because they don’t share the common Baptist conviction that all use of alcohol is a sin, they’re getting the plug pulled on a big source of funding.

This decision by the MBC effectively places the ban on alcohol on a higher level of importance than essential things like the doctrines mentioned above. And when Christians do this, when we confuse secondary issues with primary issues, we cloud the centrality of the gospel. We make it look like to be one of us, you have to do certain things and not do other things. We make it look like the gospel is about rules, about ethical behavior, rather than about trusting in the work of Christ.

Merry Christmas

If this doesn’t get to you, I just don’t know.

A little inside, I know.

But quite funny if you get it.

Variety.

That’s the name of the game here at Wiser Time. Yesterday: continuing a series on N. T. Wright and the New Perspective on Paul. Tomorrow: more of the same, maybe a book review.

Tonight: a video with a rap about Home Depot.

The Longs are friends of Annie’s who are trying to win a $25,000 contest, and part of the vote depends on how many people watch the video on YouTube. So go there and watch it. I’ll vouch for them. It’s quite well done. I don’t know these people, so I have no vested interest in their winning money for home repairs; I just thought it was really funny. And I like to think I know funny when I see it.

N. T. Wright on Justification

In my first post on the New Perspective on Paul (NPP) I summarized the problem that NPP folks see with the traditional view of justification: the Jews of Paul’s day weren’t legalists, so his doctrine of justification could not have been a response to the idea of works righteousness. I am happy to oblige my many commenters (well, Leah) and try to summarize what they do with justification as a result. A caveat, though: like most schools of thought, the NPP isn’t a cookie-cutter kind of thing. They all agree that the traditional view of justification isn’t right, but they don’t all agree on what Paul did mean. N. T. Wright is the main guy within the evangelical fold who has taken up the NPP view, so from here on out I’ll be talking about his view of justification.

First, the traditional view of justification. The Westminster Shorter Catechism has a good short statement of the historical Protestant view:

Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.

Rom 3:23-25, 5:17-19, and Gal 2:16 are some of the basic texts for this doctrine. The best illustration of it is a courtroom scene. Man is the defendant, God is the judge. God’s law states that the wages of sin is death, and man has most definitely sinned. Sin is an infinite offense because it is an offense against God’s infinite holiness; God will not just wipe it out and pretend it didn’t happen. The only way for man to escape the death sentence is for a substitute to take his place. That is the central aspect of Christ’s work on the cross: he stands in the place of man, bearing the full weight of God’s wrath against sin. So now sin is taken away, pardoned, but man is left, at best, in a neutral state– lacking the perfect record of obedience God requires to stand in his presence. So not only does Christ take on our sin– it is imputed to him– but he gives us his righteousness, his record of having perfectly fulfilled and kept God’s law. His righteousness is imputed to us, and on that basis, God the Father can declare us “not guilty;” he can justify us.

Justification, then, is a legal declaration that we are not only not guilty, but are counted righteous because of the righteousness of Christ that’s been given to us. This is what Martin Luther called the “Great Exchange”: our sin for Christ’s righteousness. The classic biblical text is 2 Cor 5:21: “For our sake [God] made him who knew no sin to be sin, so that we might become in him the righteousness of God.”

Enter N. T. Wright. Wright does not believe that justification is how we get into God’s kingdom, but is a declaration that we are already in the kingdom. For Wright, justification is God’s declaration that we are “in the covenant,” a declaration that is made now in anticipation of a final verdict that will be offered at the last judgment, on the basis of the whole life lived. It’s not an effectual action on God’s part, but merely a declarative one: it’s a declaration that the person in question is included in God’s covenant people.

There are some other aspects of the traditional view of salvation that Wright has to change for this to work. Among these is that he rejects the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. I’ll take this up in the next post, and then begin to summarize the response of those of us who still hold the traditional view. Let me close, though, with this: at first glance this seems like a very small distinction. It is not. It has enormous implications, and I agree with Piper and many others that ultimately the gospel really is at stake. So if you’ve stuck with me this far, hang in there and we’ll keep working through these ideas in the light of Scripture.

Uganda Info

For those joining me in fasting and prayer today, I wanted to give some pictures to help us understand the reality of the ebola outbreak and response.

Bundibugyo (bun-de-BOOJ-ee-o) province is on the western border of Uganda, which is between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Kenya in central Africa.

Scott & Jennifer Myhre are the leaders of WHM’s Uganda team. Their kids are Julia, Jack, Luke, & Caleb.

The Uganda team. Melissa & I went through WHM orientation with Sarah Reber (to the left of the Myhres) in March.

All of the team except Scott & Jennifer, who are both doctors, and one other member have been evacuated to Kampala, the capital. Jennifer, I believe, is waiting out her decontamination period and then will join the team there.

Dr. Jonah’s burial last week. He was a Ugandan doctor who was infected through contact with a patient. At his brief funeral service (most people are understandably afraid to come anywhere close to an infected person), Scott read from John 12:

But Jesus answered them, saying: The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground an dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves Me, let him follow Me; and where I am, there My servant will be also. If anyone serves Me, him My Father will honor.

Dr. Jonah’s wife Melen and children. At the Myhres’ blog there are links to send financial support for both the disease response and Dr. Jonah’s family.

A few things we can pray for:

• For the healing of the sick, and for the outbreak to dry up. I’m praying Psalm 107:20, “He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.” Yesterday there were no new cases, but there have been 115 total cases with 31 deaths (in other words, a 26.9% mortality rate).
• For God to sustain and strengthen the Myhres. They’re exhausted, they’ve lost one of their best friends, and their team (including their kids) are hours away. Jennifer will rejoin them soon, God willing, but imagine having to make the call of staying to help or going so that your kids at least won’t lose both their parents.
• That in this suffering God will cause the people to trust and believe in him. The testimony of believers staying in harm’s way when they could easily leave, simply because they are serving the poor in Christ’s name, is powerful. Pray that the Gospel will be adorned by their sacrifice (Titus 2:10).

Two Good Christmas Records

The New Perspective on Paul

After my review yesterday of Piper’s new book, I thought it might be at least mildly interesting to some readers to get a 30,000 foot view of what the book’s about. I intentionally didn’t go far into this in the review, because even more than the arguments on the issue at hand I was struck by Piper’s book as an example of theology done well. But over the next few days I’ll take up some of the high points of the book and try to boil them down (not because my readers are dumb, of course, but because you might not have the time or interest to plow into this all that heavily).

The New Perspective on Paul (NPP) is a theological movement that basically has to do with Paul’s doctrine of justification. A more elaborate explanation is here, but in essence the NPP argues that since the Reformation (1500’s) Christians have largely misunderstood the Judaism Paul came out of, and therefore misunderstood Paul’s reaction to it. The historical view is that Judaism in Paul’s day had become a works-based religion: many (not all) Jews had the idea that they gained God’s favor by keeping the Law. Paul’s response was to teach justification by faith, i.e. that faith in Christ, not observance of the Torah, was the means by which a person could be justified, declared righteous, in God’s sight.

The NPP argues that this is incorrect. Actually, the typical Jew would have said that they kept the Law as a sign of gratitude for God’s having chosen them. Judaism, then, was a grace-based religion, just like Paul’s. So the traditional view would have Paul saying to Jews, “You think you can be justified by works, but you can actually only be justified by faith.” The NPP doesn’t think this is right, because they don’t think first-century Jews believed they could be justified by works in the first place.

If, then, Paul’s doctrine of justification was not a response to a works-based system, that changes what his doctrine of justification actually was. This means that NPP advocates, including N. T. Wright, have a different understanding of justification than the traditional Protestant view. Which is where we’ll pick up next time.

The Trumpet Child

The trumpet child will blow his horn
Will blast the sky till it’s reborn
With Gabriel’s power and Satchmo’s grace
He will surprise the human race

The trumpet he will use to blow
Is being fashioned out of fire
The mouthpiece is a glowing coal
The bell a burst of wild desire

The trumpet child will riff on love
Thelonious notes from up above
He’ll improvise a kingdom come
Accompanied by a different drum

The trumpet child will banquet here
Until the lost are truly found
A thousand days, a thousand years
Nobody knows for sure how long

The rich forget about their gold
The meek and mild are strangely bold
A lion lies beside a lamb
And licks a murderer’s outstretched hand

The trumpet child will lift a glass
His bride now leaning in at last
His final aim to fill with joy
The earth that man all but destroyed

“The Trumpet Child,” from the album of the same name
Over the Rhine