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Contemplative Prayer and the Voices we Hear in our Heads
There is a very insightful article, Encountering Voices in the Silence of Contemplative Prayer by Pastor Larry DeBruyn here . The article discusses the teachings of the Contemplative Prayer Movement (CPM) leader Richard Foster concerning discerning whose voice we are listening to in the midst of our ‘contemplation’ and compares Foster’s teaching in the light of scripture. Early in the article Pastor DeBruyn quotes Foster:
“Learning to distinguish the voice of God . . . from just human voices within us . . . comes in much the same way that we learn any other voice. Satan pushes and condemns. God draws and encourages. And we can know the difference.” [1]
If the voice is negative it’s Satan. If it’s positive and affirming, it’s God. Foster apparently doesn’t offer any advice for discerning whether or not we are listening to our own voice. I guess if we are truly ‘spiritual’ we don’t talk to ourselves in the silence of contemplating God. Later in the same article the author discusses the voice of the Holy Spirit – God’s ‘voice’ in the life of the believer:
“We live in the age of the Holy Spirit and His spiritual communication and communion with the soul of the believer. But the Spirit’s communication is not always pleasant. Of the Holy Spirit’s communication Jesus predicted, “And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment” (John 16:8). Even the Comforter does not always comfort. Sometimes He convicts, and conviction of soul is not pleasant to experience. It upsets. None of us likes criticism. We do not like to be told we are wrong. Yet without the voice of the Spirit’s conviction, we would continue in sin, pursue unrighteousness, and deny we are accountable to God for our behavior. So when, for legitimate reasons, the Spirit’s conviction comes over them, will Christians be so deluded by the positivity and feel-good mindset that saturates today’s evangelical church that they will ignore the Spirit’s conviction, or worse, that they will assign godly conviction to be the bullying voice of Satan?” (Emphasis mine)
A dear Christian friend I met here in Blogland emailed me some time ago wanting to know if she was to only speak positive things all of the time. Apparently other believers in Blogland, or maybe in her church, were telling her that she should. Those who offer such ‘counsel’ are likely among the deluded Christians spoken of in the previous paragraph, because such advice runs counter to Scripture. Nothing personal intended here – I don’t know of a single believer who is immune from the enemy’s deception.
I also don’t know anyone in these blogs who is personally involved in the sort of contemplative prayer that runs dangerously close to the pagan mysticism of Eastern religions. So why make a fuss? I have a few good reasons.
- I’ve been there and back – all the way there and back.
- I can’t think of any ‘personal word’ from God to this guy that could not be traced to something read or taught from Scripture that the Holy Spirit has brought to mind.
- Claiming that the work of the Holy Spirit, who works in all believers similarly, is God speaking specially to ‘ME’ serves to feed fleshly pride.
- Once pride takes hold and begins to germinate, I won’t be satisfied with mere ‘special insights’. The enemy will use the seed of pride to tempt me to ‘deeper/higher’ levels of spirituality. Satan’s ‘operational tempo’ seems to always be perfectly matched to the growth rate of the individual believer. He will never tempt us with something he knows we will scoff at, only that which could be appealing.
To believers reading this, please receive it as a word of caution. Yes we serve a God who is personal, loves us personally, even chose us by name – just don’t get too personal.
Endnote: [1] Michelle McKinney Hammond, “Fear of Silence,” Be Still (DVD © 2006 Twentieth Fox Home Entertainment LLC).
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I also encourage examining other discernment resources available at Discernment Ministries.
Quote of the Day
“We cannot blink the fact that gentle Jesus, meek and mild, was so stiff in His opinions and so inflammatory in His language, that He was thrown out of church, stoned, hunted from place to place, and finally gibbetted as a firebrand and a public danger. We have very efficiently pared the claws of the Lion of Judah into a household pet for pale curates and pious old ladies.”
Dorothy L. Sayers
Where is Jesus Now?
A Sunday School teacher of preschoolers was concerned that his students might be a little confused about Jesus Christ because of the Christmas season emphasis on His birth. He wanted to make sure they understood that the birth of Jesus occurred for real. He asked his class, “Where is Jesus today?”
Steven raised his hand and said, “He’s in heaven.” Mary was called on and answered, “He’s in my heart.” Little Johnny, waving his hand furiously, blurted out, “I know, I know! He’s in our bathroom!!!”
The whole class got very quiet, looked at the teacher, and waited for a response. The teacher was completely at a loss for a few very long seconds. Finally, he gathered his wits and asked Little Johnny how he knew this. Little Johnny said, “Well…every morning, my father gets up, bangs on the bathroom door, and yells, “Good Lord, are you still in there?!”
That’s an old joke, but the question is quite valid. Where IS Jesus now? I fear there are some who might be confused in this matter. Scripture tells us exactly where He is now:
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Philippians 2:8-9
And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name:
John 17:5
And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
Ephesians 3:9
And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:
Hebrews 1:1-3
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high:
At this very moment, Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, His majesty and glory restored, awaiting the command from His Father to come to earth a second time, but as judge, not as Savior – that work was finished at the Cross.
The work of God on Earth and in the life of the believer is in and through the Holy Spirit, whose sanctifying work is ever conforming us into the image of God’s Son. It is the Holy Sprit who brings comfort and peace when we are troubled or weary, but who also brings conviction and guilt when we sin. The love of God ‘shed abroad in our hearts’ is the Holy Spirit at work. The peace that surpasses all understanding is the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. And the list goes on. . .
If Jesus is sitting in majesty and glory at the right hand of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is now working on earth, where did all this “Jesus is my dance partner” mushy romanticism come from? More importantly, where in scripture is such a view of the Lord of the universe presented in scripture? Can anyone out there tell me?
Satan’s Gambit
In the world of chess, a gambit is a chess opening in which the first player risks or sacrifices material, usually a pawn, with the hope of achieving a resulting advantageous position. One article I found that contained a list of twenty opening gambits, including one colorfully named the Fried Liver Attack. Not included in the list was Satan’s Gambit. Perhaps that’s because in the world of chess there isn’t an opening gambit with that name – at least I didn’t find one.
So what do I mean by Satan’s Gambit, and to what game does it apply? I’m glad you asked those questions – we’ll address them in reverse order.
Satan’s Gambit is not about a game, but about our Christian faith, “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6;12), and Satan is the enemy’s CINC (Commande in Chief). In the art of spiritual warfare, Satan’s opening gambit has always been to attack the authority of inspired Scripture, since the days of the New Testament church. The Apostle Paul specifically addressed ‘other gospels’ that had corrupted the pure Gospel of Christ.
The latest form of Satan’s Gambit would probably reside in the philosophy of the Emergent church, and the leaders of the ‘conversation’ whose passion for the uncertainty of scripture has been heard from their own lips and thoroughly documented, as have strong connections to the ‘contemplative prayer movement’ . As novel and appealing as their ideas might be, they lack a truly original thought. The Emperor of Uncertainty has new clothes but he’s still running around naked. Dr. John MacArthur had this to say in an insightful interview with Phil Johnson:
The bottom line, I think, in the movement is that it is a denial of the clarity of Scripture. It is a denial that we can know what the Bible really says. And as I said, it’s amorphous because there’s a mish-mash of approaches to this and a mish-mash of styles and things like that. But they have embraced this mystery as if it’s true spirituality. And so, it becomes celebration of mystery, a celebration of ignorance, a celebration that we can’t really know. I think it’s just another form of liberalism. I think it’s just another form of denying the clarity of Scripture. And I think there’s a motive behind it…it’s just another philosophy.
Post-modernism is another bad philosophy. Modernism was a bad philosophy. Post-modernism is another bad philosophy. But in both cases, they assault the Scripture. Modernism made reason, human reason, the king. Reason was supreme in modernism. Thomas Payne, The Age of Reason, The Enlightenment, all of those things, the Renaissance. Out of that came the worship of the human mind and the mind trumps God. Now mystery trumps the Bible. The human mind trumps the Bible in modernism, mystery trumps the Bible in post-modernism. It is at the foundation an unwillingness to accept the clear teaching of Scripture. (Online source) (Emphasis mine.)
However dangerous to the church the Emergent movement might be, there is a deceptive variant of Satan’s Gambit that is far more dangerous to the spiritual growth of the individual believer. Rather than openly doubting the authority of scripture, this version of the gambit is far more subtle. While seeming to allow for adherence to biblical doctrine, the variant assigns more importance to personal insights and feelings about scripture than the clear teaching of scripture itself. There is even an online university that advertises a book ‘Hearing God’s Voice – Guaranteed!’. The book teaches that the best way to hear God’s voice is through our ‘spontaneous thoughts, feelings and insights’. To test the validity of these ‘journaled’ spontaneous thoughts, they are given to three others who ‘discern’ whether or not it was God speaking.
I am not saying that God doesn’t ever speak, or isn’t involved in our thoughts and emotions. The test of their validity,however, should be the light of Scripture, not the ‘third party’ discernment described above. What we have here is a form of mysticism that teaches the gullible how to be false prophets to themselves! The authority and light of Scripture is supplanted by subjective internal feelings and experiences. Sound rather ridiculous? It should!
You might be asking “How do sincere believers fall for this kind of false teaching?” Well, there are probably several ways, but I know of a perfect ‘training ground’ that the enemy uses to slide the gullible (usually believers young in their faith) right into it! I speak from experience because I’ve been there and back. What I am referring to is popular What Does this Verse Mean “to ME”? form of Bible study.
This highly subjective approach to scripture lets the individual interpret the text by what he/she ‘feels’ God is saying. When this is the accepted/preferred form of studying the Bible, all sorts of ‘wonderful insights’ are obtained and self-congratulation abounds, accompanied by considerable fawning over everyone else’s ‘insights’. I remember many such Bible studies in which no one was really growing in grace and discipleship, but we sure felt good about ourselves! Can you see the progression here?
- Reading the Bible but spending more time discussing how one ‘feels’ about the text instead of inductive study to learn what it says in context and applying it.
- Progressing to a deeper level of ‘hearing’ God’s voice and receiving ‘personal words’ of prophesy for one’s self and others, outside of scripture.
- Doubting the very certainty of the truth of scripture and embracing forms of mysticism as the best or only way to really hear God.
While there may be other, smaller steps from innocent appearing Christian fellowship to complete apostasy, these three can almost always be observed in the process and all three attack the certainty and authority of scripture, almost invisibly at first, but sometimes resulting in embracing the heretical.
So there you have what I call Satan’s Gambit. Similar to a well played game of chess, there is an initial move that is not necessarily harmful, but that can escalate and end in disaster. Experienced chess players study various opening gambits and how to counter the advance of the enemy. How much more crucial it is for believers to be able to recognize the enemy of our souls and counter his subtle attacks!
There are NO true Atheists!
I say again…there are NO true atheists, and add that the religion of atheism is Humanism. ‘Self’ is the god of atheismn.
If you are reading this as a ‘professing’ atheist, listen closely. Sir/Madam Atheist, you are your own God. I do compliment you for your sense of morality. Where did you obtain it, by the way? Where did any sense of morality come from? It came from the God of the Bible. Your sense of morality is based on ‘borrowed capital’. You borrow from God’s moral law to have a moral system, yet you desire to deny His existence. You either make it up as you go along, deciding what is ‘moral’ based on your own desires, or you claim the moral values of the system of humanism that denies God.
The only difference between the two sources of morality is the amount of self-pride resident in choosing of one over the other!
Here is a bit of Scripture for you:
Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.”He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. – Psalm 2:1-4
Unlike God’s attitude toward those who “take counsel against God and His Anointed” I am not laughing.
I pray that God will pour out His mercy and grace upon you, draw you to Himself, and bring you into His glorious kingdom! If my flesh rises up in anger against you personally, I pray that God will accuse me of my own self-righteousness, and pray that He will replace that anger with tears – and He does. I pray that my zealousness in this matter is for His Kingdom and not for MY thoughts or opinions – they don’t amount to a hill of beans.
One last bit of Scripture for you, and for those who might believe in a god, but not the God of Scripture:
“Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” – John 3:18, from Jesus’ own lips. . .
Salvation, Free Will and Assurance
Is it possible to believe in the complete free will of man in choosing Christ and certain assurance of salvation once saved? I don’t think so. It’s not logical. If I believe that I exercised my ‘free will’ in choosing Christ, that same ‘free will’ goes flying out the window if I believe I have any assurance of my salvation. On the other hand, if I believe that God exercised His complete sovereignty in my salvation, I can also believe that the God who saved me will also keep me, something that is promised in His word.
I had that one figured out even before I believed in the doctrine of God’s sovereign election. I never exactly believed I could lose my salvation, like dropping my wallet on the sidewalk and never seeing it again, but I had to believe that since I had free will to choose Christ, I must also have the free will to turn from Christ, should I choose to do so. The closest I came to having assurance of my salvation during those years was that the longer I served Him, the less likely it would be that I should deny Him. There is no other logic of the matter!
Think about it. . .
God’s Sovereignty Defined – A.W. Pink
“Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty: for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is Thine; Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as Head above all” (Chronicles 29:11).
“THE Sovereignty of God is an expression that once was generally understood. It was a phrase commonly used in religious literature. It was a theme frequently expounded in the pulpit. It was a truth which brought comfort to many hearts, and gave virility and stability to Christian character. But, today, to make mention of God’s sovereignty is, in many quarters, to speak in an unknown tongue. Were we to announce from the average pulpit that the subject of our discourse would be the sovereignty of God, it would sound very much as though we had borrowed a phrase from one of the dead languages. Alas! that it should be so. Alas! that the doctrine which is the key to history, the interpreter of Providence, the warp and woof of Scripture, and the foundation of Christian theology, should be so sadly neglected and so little understood.
The sovereignty of God. What do we mean by this expression? We mean the supremacy of God, the kingship of God, the godhood of God. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that God is God. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Most High, doing according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth, so that none can stay His hand or say unto Him what doest Thou? (Daniel 4:35). To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the Almighty, the Possessor of all power in heaven and earth, so that none can defeat His counsels, thwart His purpose, or resist His will (Psalm 115:3). To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is “The Governor among the nations” (Psalm 22:28), setting up kingdoms, overthrowing empires, and determining the course of dynasties as pleaseth Him best. To say that God is sovereign is to declare that He is the “Only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15). Such is the God of the Bible.
How different is the God of the Bible from the God of modern Christendom! The conception of Deity which prevails most widely today, even among those who profess to give heed to the Scriptures, is a miserable caricature, a blasphemous travesty of the Truth. The God of the twentieth century is a helpless, effeminate being who commands the respect of no really thoughtful man. The God of the popular mind is the creation of a maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence. To say that God the Father has purposed the salvation of all mankind, that God the Son died with the express intention of saving the whole human race, and that God the Holy Spirit is now seeking to win the world to Christ; when, as a matter of common observation, it is apparent that the great majority of our fellow-men are dying in sin, and passing into a hopeless eternity: is to say that God the Father is disappointed, that God the Son is dissatisfied, and that God the Holy Spirit is defeated. We have stated the issue baldly, but there is no escaping the conclusion. To argue that God is “trying His best” to save all mankind, but that the majority of men will not let Him save them, is to insist that the will of the Creator is impotent, and that the will of the creature is omnipotent. To throw the blame, as many do, upon the Devil, does not remove the difficulty, for if Satan is defeating the purpose of God, then, Satan is Almighty and God is no longer the Supreme Being.To declare that the Creator’s original plan has been frustrated by sin, is to dethrone God. To suggest that God was taken by surprise in Eden and that He is now attempting to remedy an unforeseen calamity, is to degrade the Most High to the level of a finite, erring mortal. To argue that man is a free moral agent and the determiner of his own destiny, and that therefore he has the power to checkmate his Maker, is to strip God of the attribute of Omnipotence. To say that the creature has burst the hounds assigned by his Creator, and that God is now practically a helpless Spectator before the sin and suffering entailed by Adam’s fall, is to repudiate the express declaration of Holy Writ, namely,
“Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain” (Psalm 76:10).
In a word, to deny the sovereignty of God is to enter upon a path which, if followed to its logical terminus, is to arrive at blank atheism.
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The above is excerpted from A.W. Pink’s work The Sovereignty of God, first published in 1918. Some who read this, if there are any, will never have heard of A.W. Pink. Others might recognize his name and frown in distaste, believing him to be a radical fundamentalist of some sort, in the ‘horrible’ tradition of those ‘awful’ Calvinists who hold to such things as predestination and election. Still others will recognize that the sovereignty of God falls into the category of ‘doctrine’ and dismiss it outright, since we don’t really need doctrine, only Jesus.
My earnest desire is that you will have read this and will have been greatly blessed by it. On the other hand, if you have read it and dismissed it or even hated it, that you have read it is a good thing. If you have read it and are earnestly seeking after truth, God will impress His truth upon your heart, if indeed truth exists in this short article.
If you perceive, by the grace of God, His truth in this article and it somehow conflicts with your current beliefs, please continue to seek truth until God settles the matter from His written word.
If you have been blessed by this article, or even if you have hated it, submit a quick comment and let me know. And by the way, have a blessed day!
‘Christian’ Blogging – an IPR
So what’s an IPR? I’m glad you asked – it stands for ‘In Progress Review’. That’s what this post is about. I’ve been cruising around Christian Blogland for six months now and it seemed wise to reflect a bit an decide whether or not to continue. Is it a worthwhile endeavor, bringing glory to God, or is it mostly about professing believers finding another form of self-satisfying fellowship that tends to sacrifice truth on the altar of ‘tolerance’?
Offered in a blog comment by the post’s author, to all who might read the post:
“To all: I know this is a many-sided topic, and to those who would try to pick it apart theologically … know I’m not trying to do that.”
The particular author is irrelevant, as is the topic of the post. There is, however, an underlying sentiment that’s a serious matter that is not only prevalent in ‘Christian’ blogging, but one that pervades postmodern evangelicalism. I am not referring to the author’s desire that there be no useless personal arguments, if that is what was meant by ‘picking apart’. What concerns me is the addition of the modifier “theologically” to picking the topic apart. Although the author was speaking reflexively (“I’m not trying to do that.”) the clear implication of the comment, in a larger context, was for “all” to also avoid theological debate.
I realize that I just changed the phrase ‘pick apart theologically’ to ‘theological debate’, so don’t go pinging off the walls and accuse me of changing the subject. I am not accusing the the post’s author of not wanting theological debate, but avoiding theological debate is the matter at hand in this post.
Found by ‘accident’ when clicking a link to an interesting sounding book this morning:
“At its most basic level, the word theology is “God talk,” the Greek theos originally meaning “God” and logos meaning “word, statement, speech, discourse.” God is then the ultimate subject and source of theology. Included in theology is the study of the nature of God himself, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. But theology also includes the scope of the Bible itself: the study of the Word of God subject by subject, like the doctrine of sin, the doctrine of grace, demons, angels, and many others.”
Now to the heart of the matter. . .
I fully realize that I have only had this blog up for six months, but I think my observations are accurate concerning the realm of ‘Christian’ blogging, where I hang out a lot online. These observations concern ‘Christian’ blogging about ‘things spiritual’, or ‘God stuff’. My observations:
‘Christian’ discussion blogs seem to fall into two categories, 1) those that want to discuss the objective truth of scripture, with or without personal application thrown in the mix and 3) those that seem to be more subjective in nature – “what this scripture means to ‘me'” having priority over the objective truth of scripture – “what does this scripture SAY”. It is to the latter that I address these observations, after watching a ‘blogged bible study’ that has gone through the first 10 chapters of John’s Gospel.
- While there is some discussion about the text of a chapter under consideration, there is far more discussion concerning participants’ ‘personal’ insights that might or might not apply to the specific text, and that are nearly always attributed to the Holy Spirit..
- There is a considerable amount of affirmation of these ‘personal’ insights, between participants and from most who merely observe and comment.
- Discussions of the text sometimes miss the central theme of the chapter when read with the overall context of the Gospel itself. This will manifest itself in discussions focusing on real or imaginary sub-themes, accompanied by more of the aforementioned personal ‘affirmations’.
- ‘Wolves’ disguised as sheep like to lurk behind the scenes and enter the dialogue to add to all of the ‘affirming’ going on and to attest to the most vacuous of ‘personal insights’ being extremely ‘profound’. This serves Satan well.
- Those who would attempt to bring scriptural clarity and/or a measure of specificity to the ‘dialogue’ in order to render it meaningful and profitable for real Christian growth are often deemed intolerant and arrogant, especially when scripture touches a nerve. That’s known as ‘shooting the messenger’, for those who missed it.
- “Let’s all just get along…” is the rule of the day. Feeling good about ourselves is more important than being cut by the Sword of Truth.
I could continue, but I won’t. This is NOT a personal attack against any specific individual. What these observations reflect is the ‘sold out’ nature of postmodern evangelicalism to a ‘me’ centered Christianity, rather than the God-centric faith of Scripture. I also realize that there are many true believers who are caught up in this postmodern distortion of biblical Christianity because they were brought up in it. For those, my heart aches. The greater grief in all of this is the grief to the Holy Spirit who indwells all believers, the insult to the Son who died that we might live, and the dishonor it brings to the Father.
To blog, or not to blog, that is the question. . .
Give Me Doctrine or Give me Death – Part IV
Excerpted from this article at 9 Marks, concerning man’s response to to the message of the gospel:
THE GOSPEL
Response
All this of course requires a response from people. Jesus said it this way: “The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!” (Mark 1:15)
Repent and believe. Turn away and trust. Renounce sin and rely on Christ.
Relying on Christ means embracing the fact that salvation has nothing to do with works performed or not performed, words said or not said. It means renouncing every other possibility for appealing to God’s mercy. It means jumping empty-handed off a cliff and crying, “Jesus, if you don’t save me, then I am lost,” and then trusting by faith that he will save. Relying on Christ means putting away the instinct to stand before God and point to all your good words and works for why he should save you. When he asks why he should declare you righteous, you only point to Jesus and say, “God, justify me because of what he did on the cross. I have no other plea.”
Renouncing sin—repentance—is not merely turning over a new leaf. It is not an über-New Year’s resolution. It is a comprehensive, wholesale change in a person’s life. And it is possible only by regeneration, the life-giving work of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life.
Repentance is a change of orientation: from death to life, from darkness to light. And it has repercussions in every area of a believer’s life. It means, first of all, turning away from sin and toward God. Not that a believer will never stumble into sin again—at least not until heaven (1 John 1:8). But a believer will count himself dead to sin and alive to God. He will refuse sin the right to reign. He will not offer his body to sin, but to God as an instrument of righteousness (Rom. 6:11-13). He will orient himself to live in harmony with God’s law.
Indeed, the repenting believer does even more. He determines to live in such a way that restores relationships, keeps peace, and gives people around him the sense and smell of Jesus Christ in his life. He determines to join God’s work in redeeming the world, caring for the poor and oppressed, and rolling back the effects of the Fall. Repentance is both vertical and horizontal, God-ward and people-ward.
Again, both these directions—vertical and horizontal—are important, and to neglect either one of them leads to a distortion of the gospel. For example, the revivalism that characterizes large segments of evangelicalism tends to neglect the horizontal aspect of repentance, focusing almost solely on the believer’s individual relationship with God. Far too often, revivalistic sermons call people to believe in Christ, repent of sin, and be baptized—but that’s about it. And the result is that thousands of people are “won and baptized” in America’s biggest churches every year, and then never seen again. There is no change of life, no union with Christ’s church, no repentance toward other people, nothing at all of what the Bible describes as newness of life. They are won one minute, and lost the next.
On the other hand, there is also a danger of over-emphasizing the horizontal, of pressing Christians in the work of restoring earthly relationships so hard that the most important relationship of all is neglected. Many new books—perhaps especially Brian McLaren’s—major on alleviating this world’s oppression and overturning this world’s injustices. They press believers, often compellingly, to join God’s work in “redeeming” the world. But their gospel becomes so socially oriented, so focused on the present, that “redemption” comes to take on a different meaning entirely. The great biblical themes of salvation from sin and its consequences for God’s people get lost. Yet those ideas lie at the very heart of the gospel’s meaning. To be sure, the horizontal aspects of responding to the gospel are crucial. God will one day create a new heaven and a new earth, and God expects us to work, even here, even now, toward that goal. But that cannot be all. We cannot de-emphasize the doctrines of salvation and eternity, or pretend that they are somehow not important to the Christian life. For as Paul once wrote, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men” (1 Cor. 15:19)
CONCLUSION
Some people will argue that subjecting the doctrines of the gospel to interpretation, making them flexible and even expendable, would result in a freer, more open, more mysterious, and thus more compelling Christianity. I just don’t believe that is true. In fact, I believe it would result in a tragic distortion and even fatal falsehood in our understanding of both ourselves and God.
John Calvin once wrote that a person cannot truly know himself until he has come to a knowledge of God. And you see, people can only know God and themselves truly—who they apart from Christ, who they are in Christ, and who they are becoming through his work in their lives—through the doctrines of the gospel revealed in Scripture. The gospel is the divinely-revealed key to our own story, and therefore every part of it is crucial if we are to see ourselves or God clearly. Take out any part of it, subject any line of it to your own re-imagining, and you blur your own vision. That’s not freedom. It’s more bondage.
Real freedom is seeing clearly. It is knowing beyond doubt who you are and what God has done for you in Christ. It is being able to live your life with full assurance that God will do what he has promised and that one day you will see his face. That kind of freedom doesn’t come from having the ability to remake the gospel in your own image. It comes simply from trusting what God says about you, about himself, and about his Son. In short, it comes from believing the gospel.
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Greg Gilbert is the 9Marks lead writer on the topic of the gospel. He is also the director of theological research for the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and an elder at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, KY.
September 2006
Greg Gilbert
©9Marks
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The Battle Cry 