What is “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God?” and “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor, 4:4, 6)? What is the gospel and what makes it so glorious?
It will take an eternity to understand and grasp and enjoy. Here is an 18 minute head start. Wow.
[RSS Readers may need to go to the blog to view the video]
HT: Timmy Brister, who notes that this is perhaps the best gospel presentation he has ever heard. Agreed.
Reading the introduction to a biblical commentary is rarely seen as the obvious path to take for soul-refreshment. But sometimes it is, especially if it’s Robert Yarbrough on 1–3 John. Here’s a quick window into John’s letter through his eyes:
If 1–3 John leave the disciple who studies them with any single lasting impression, it is the grandeur and centrality of God.
Part of this is the sheer volume of references to him. There is hardly a verse or even clause anywhere that does not name a person of the Godhead (Trinity), a divine attribute, or a divine work (like a command that has come from God).
These letters are not simply theological, as one might say ale is alcoholic: they are rather theology distillate, analogous to highest-proof grain alcohol that is highly flammable and intoxicating in even small amounts.
God – mainly Father and Son, but occasionally also Holy Spirit – suffuses every situation John envisions, each piece of counsel he issues, every sentiment he conveys, each affirmation he sets forth. No OT psalmist is any more God saturated in awareness than the writer of these letters (27-28).
One interesting bit to note is how much debate there is about the authorship of the letter. Many take it for granted that it was the apostle John (which is probably right). But it isn’t entirely obvious – the author doesn’t mention his name and hardly talks about himself. Yarbrough relates this very problem to this God-centered perspective of the letter:
One reason that determining the authorship of these letters is such a sticky question is that the writer’s visceral urge is to witness to God, in whose truth and love he has ventured far, not to present a profile of his personal identity and petty human expectations. His own personality is obscured by the divine person to whom he has so thoroughly subordinated his thoughts, actions, and affection (28).
Thankful that commentaries don’t have to drive me to the couch for a nap, but rather send me to the Bible and to the God who speaks to me there.
Richard Lovelace, Renewal as a Way of Life, 160:
“Often [Satan] first tempts us to walk in the flesh and then holds this up to us in accusation to drive us into despair. This strategy is transparently simple, but maddeningly effective.”
Here it is. Satan’s simple, but maddeningly effective strategy in two steps:
Step 1: Get Christian to sin.
Step 2: Get Christian to despair about it indefinitely. Certainly don’t let him see that the cross is there for this very reason.
No one is surprised by the first step. Of course he wants us to sin. But the second step is where we’re often deceived.
But 1 John 2:1 gives us an alternative here. “I’m writing these things that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” God’s simple, but joyfully effective strategy in this verse has two parts.
Part 1: “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” That’s not a surprise. But Satan’s strategy is for us to think this is simply the whole of God’s message to us. It’s easy for us to think this is the sum of the Christian life. Don’t sin. But what if Satan’s first step is successful (it often is, of course)? He takes us right to his own second step of despair and leaves us there. But to stay in despair is to pretend there’s no cross, no advocate.
Thus, Part 2: “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” No need to despair. No need to feel like a sinful slug the rest of the day. Or, if you do, you can be a happy, redeemed, sinful slug with an Advocate. I’ll take that.
It’s a strange question. But it’s an important one to answer. Think about the first disciples. Jesus called them to follow him and they did. We look to Jesus’ relationship with them as a model for discipleship in general. However, as we read the gospels, we learn that they did not yet even know who Jesus really was. When Peter finally confesses that Jesus is the Christ, for example, it becomes obviously clear that he had no idea that this entailed a mission to die and rise again. Once Jesus starts talking about suffering Peter has a conniption fit. It seems that these first disciples did not yet understand the cross and resurrection, which would later become the focal point of the gospel proclamation. What does it mean to be a Christian if it doesn’t mean your only hope is in the Jesus who died and rose again for you? Yet these disciples “follow” Jesus without this knowledge and it’s transformative effects.
This is on my mind because I’ve recently heard some say that Christians aren’t doing discipleship like Jesus. Jesus’ method of discipleship, they say, involves having people following Jesus who don’t yet believe in him. They are “disciples” of Jesus without yet believing. Just like the first disciples, right? These statements are made by some gospel-centered, missional folks that I continue to learn gobs from. But this doesn’t sit right.
I think this misses something. In his short book on the Gospel of Matthew, Don Carson proves helpful here:
We sometimes forget that the way the first disciples came to faith is not exactly the way people come to faith today. A person who comes to genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ today has already come to terms with Christ’s resurrection and the Holy Spirit’s descent – two momentous events in the history of redemption. In taking the first steps to repentance and faith such a person must have struggled with questions about his or her own sinfulness, wrestled with whether Jesus really did rise from the dead, hesitated before the wonderful doctrine of grace so fully set forth in the cross. Yet all such steps are necessarily different from the steps taken by would-be disciples before the cross, before the Resurrection, before Pentecost.
Therefore when we talk about the fledgling faith of the first disciples, we must remember that their baby faith was not exactly like the baby faith of new Christians today…
That is why the stories about faith and unbelief in the Gospels can never rightly be applied to us today in a careless, thoughtless, or superficial fashion… Their first concern is to focus attention on Jesus, not to establish a psychological profile of people who come to faith in any age (Carson, God With Us, 91-92).
So, care is needed. After the cross and the resurrection discipleship doesn’t look exactly the same as it did before these events. And that’s how it should be. Before the cross and resurrection discipleship was a call to follow Jesus’ person while being fairly in the dark about who he was and what he came to do. Afterwards, however, a disciple isn’t a disciple without dealing with the cross and all that it entails for understanding our sinfulness and the grace of God. We don’t call people to “follow” a vague notion of Jesus for a few years and call that discipleship now. This doesn’t mean we don’t engage with those who don’t yet believe, invite them into our lives and homes, and spend all sorts of time with them. We do. And we have to, for how else do we end up making disciples? But we do it all the while knowing that this is not yet following Jesus, the crucified and risen Savior and King. They may be disciples in the making, but they are not yet made disciples.
The local church in the American context needs to do more opening of their meetings, small groups, and lives to unbelievers. How else will the world see the radical, supernatural one-anothering love that we have for each other (John 13:34-35; 17:21, 23)? But just having people hang around true disciples doesn’t make them disciples. Just because they commit to loving a neighborhood together with other Christians doesn’t mean they’re doing kingdom-work or disciplemaking. Keeping the distinction clear, it seems to me, is an act of love, for it allows everyone to know where they are and what it actually means to follow Jesus and be found in him.
My wife and I were just introduced to the show, “Duck Dynasty,” a few days ago. We love it. Here’s a Good Word from the Duck Commander himself:
[RSS readers will need to go to the blog to watch]
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9).
I’ve prayed this and thought, “I’m honestly not quite sure what I’m saying.” What does this mean?
The first step is answering this question: is this a statement of praise to God or is it a request? For years I thought it was a statement of praise or adoration to God. I thought that it was the same thing as saying, “God, you are great and holy and worthy of everything I have.” But notice it doesn’t say, “hallowed is your name.” It says “hallowed be your name.” It’s a request. It’s asking God to do something. Jesus is telling us to pray, “may your name be hallowed.”
But what are we really asking God to do? The second step is figuring out what “hallowed” means. It means to honor something as holy (lit., sanctify). It is to set something apart, recognizing its uniqueness. When you hallow something, you see it as special, superior, and not to be regarded as common.
Third step: What are we asking God to honor? His own name. Throughout the Bible, God’s ‘name’ is another way of simply referring to himself. So Jesus is saying to pray, “Our Father in heaven, would you cause yourself to be honored? Would you let people see you for who you are and no longer disregard you? Would you see how little you are honored in people’s hearts and lives and act to change this? Would you show yourself to be as great as you are so that people everywhere might truly know you and overflow with a thankful heart to you for all that you are and do?”
This was, of course, the problem with God’s people in the Old Testament. They disobeyed him, so he sent them into exile. But their own disobedience among the peoples drug God’s name through the dirt. “They profaned my holy name,” God says (Ezek. 36:20). But, he adds, “I had concern for my holy name” (v.21). How? By establishing a new covenant with his people, “not for your sake… but for the sake of my holy name” (v.22). God will cause his name to be honored by forgiving sins, replacing hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, and giving people his own Spirit so they can walk in obedience to him (v.25-28). Jesus pleas for the fulfillment of this hope and invites us to join him. At the heart of our prayers should be a longing for God to spread his new covenant blessings to others so that they might honor his name.
And this is the first request Jesus gives us. He could have started anywhere with anything. But he begins with this.
We always pray for what we love. This is what Jesus wants to be central. “Here is what you should want most and therefore what should pray first.” The hope that many people would come to glorify God with all their hearts should be at the forefront of our minds and hearts. And if it’s first in our hearts, it will be first in our prayers.
Just read Michael Horton’s short review of a recent devotional book. A few comments struck me. This is insightful:
Who is Jesus and why should I fix my eyes on him?” …When exhortations to trust are separated from a clear proclamation of who Christ is, what he has done, and why he is therefore trustworthy, trust simply becomes a work—something that I need to gin up within myself.
…Compared with the Psalms, for example, [this book] is remarkably shallow. I do not say that with a snarky tone, but with all seriousness. The Psalms first place before us the mighty acts of God and then call us to respond in confession, trust, and thankfulness. But in [this book] I’m repeatedly exhorted to look to Christ, rest in Christ, trust in Christ, to be thankful and long for a deeper sense of his presence, with little that might provoke any of this. Which means that I’m directed not actually to Christ but to my own inner struggle to be more trustful, restful, and thankful.
Consequently, trust becomes a work. Nothing depends on us, but everything depends on us.
I don’t know how many years I went before understanding this. Even now, Horton just brought fresh clarity.
When we try to trust Christ, rest in Christ, fight for faith, strive to believe, etc, that’s good. We must. But we can subtly take our eyes off of Christ and his gracious crosswork for us and turn them to our own striving and fight for faith. We may say we’re accepted by faith and not works all we want, but we can still subtly transform our faith into a work. And it becomes just as burdensome.
It sounds contradictory, but sometimes we just need to stop trying so hard to believe and just believe. We need to stop thinking, “c’mon Drew! Trust harder, try harder, rest more, believe!” and start thinking, “Jesus is a friend of sinners. He died for me. It’s not up to how much I work or how strong I trust. His grip on me is strong even if my grip on him is weak. He accepts and celebrates even my mustard seed of faith. I trust him.”
My name is Drew Hunter. I’m rescued by Jesus, married to Christina, raising three rascals, and preaching the gospel at Zionsville Fellowship in Zionsville, Indiana.
Just like the need to click the refresh button on the screen in front of us over and over again, our hearts need to be continually refreshed by God’s grace to us through Jesus Christ. This blog exists to further the cause of gospel renewal in our lives.
