Saturday, November 30, 2013

Solus Christus: Why Advent?

“The Christmas message is that there is hope for a ruined humanity—hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory—because at the Father’s will Jesus Christ became poor and was born in a stable so that thirty years later He might hang on a cross.” ~ J. I. Packer, Knowing God

The Advent season starts tomorrow, and over the next few weeks, I will post a short Scripture reading and devotional each day. But, before that, we must ask ourselves, “Why do I want to observe Advent? What is its purpose?” Since it wasn’t commanded by Christ and taught to us by His apostles, we can’t insist that anyone observe the Advent season. If someone tries to convince you that you must observe Advent because you are a Christian, ask them where that is commanded in Scripture, and then humbly remind them that our Lord Himself taught us not to teach “as doctrines the commandments of men.” So, if Advent isn’t a commanded season of preparation, why would I spend time writing Advent devotionals—a tool to use in the observation of Advent? Well, we’ll get to that in a moment.

First, it would be helpful to talk briefly about the history of Advent. Why did it arise as a Church tradition in the first place? When the Church emerged from almost three centuries of persecution, a Church year—a cycle of regularly occurring annual Christian festivals—began to form. Now, a religious year wasn’t a new idea in the fourth century, for there was a religious year in Old Testament worship, and even several pagan religions observed a religious year. However, the distinctiveness of the Church year is that it centers on a particular person and His Work, i.e. Jesus Christ and His work of redemption. This focus on Christ and His work for annual Christian festivals naturally formed three primary festivals: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. These festivals center our attention on the three major events of the Christian gospel: Christ’s incarnation, His death and resurrection, and His outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Church. The great Church historian, Philip Schaff, states concerning this cycle, “The church year is, so to speak, a chronological confession of faith; a moving panorama of the great events of salvation; a dramatic exhibition of the gospel for the Christian people.

Christmas and Advent were comparatively late additions to the Church calendar with Easter and Pentecost developing early in the second century, Christmas developing in the fourth, and Advent near the end of the sixth century. It was inevitable that Christmas be added to the Church year, for it celebrates the groundwork for all other festivals—the coming of Christ. John Chrysostom (bishop of Constantinople in the fourth century) defended the addition of Christmas to the Church calendar by reminding his congregation that “without the birth of Christ there were also no baptism, passion, resurrection, or ascension and no outpouring of the Holy Spirit….” That is, without a celebration of Christ’s birth there is no foundation for the celebration of Easter, Pentecost, or any other festival based on His work in this world. By the end of the sixth century, seasons of preparation for these key celebrations had been added, and thus Advent became a traditional part of the Church year. It was designed to anticipate and prepare the Church for the celebration of Christ’s birth by reminding us of the yearning for the Messiah in the long ages before His incarnation, of our hope of redemption in Him alone, of our continual need of Him, and of our future hope in His second coming. It is the anticipation and preparation for our celebration of the coming of the “hope of pardon, hope of peace with God, hope of glory,” which came through Christ alone.

“How long is the Advent season?” might be a question on your mind. Well, the Advent season begins on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, which means it’s a season that varies in length depending on day on which Christmas falls. It can be as short as 22 days (if Christmas falls on a Monday) or as long as 28 days (if Christmas falls on a Sunday).

But, we need to get back to the original question, "Why observe Advent?" Why anticipate and prepare for a celebration, even one as important as Christmas? Well, I can’t tell you why you should observe Advent because it’s not a God-given command, and therefore neither I nor anyone else can demand you observe Advent as if it were a command. Rather, I’m going to tell you why I observe Advent, and then leave your reasons between you and the Lord.

Now, let’s be honest, most believers get caught up in the consumerism and materialism of the Christmas season just like the rest of our culture. I’m no exception to that statement. During this season I find myself getting frustrated by our culture’s views on Christmas, mostly because I find those views affecting me just as much as others, and I don’t like that. At times I’ve been called a “Christmas scrooge” because I’m pretty cynical about Christmas traditions and generally don’t have much “Christmas spirit.” Therefore, I need to have my cynical, wayward heart drawn away from the consumerism and materialism of cultural Christmas and back towards Jesus and the glorious truth of His incarnation in this world. That’s why I need to observe Advent and perhaps why it might be helpful for you as well.

Observing Advent doesn’t have some special spiritual power, and the Advent Sundays are no more holy than any other Lord’s Day in the rest of the year. What it does do is give me a daily pause and reminder of what this time of year means to the Christian faith and why we celebrate the birth of Christ in the first place. It provides me with a much-needed corrective for everything else I hear and see from the world during the Christmas season. In this sense, it helps me reset myself from anticipating presents, stockings, decorations, or Christmas traditions, and it focuses me back on celebrating the incarnation of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Observing Advent gets my mind back on the fact that our Lord has come, that He has accomplished complete redemption for His people, and that He is coming again one day to usher in the new heavens and new earth. That’s why I like observing Advent and why I think it might be helpful for you as well. If you find that reason compelling or perhaps it brings to your mind another good reason for you to observe Advent, then come back each day and keep reading.

A few words need to be said about the title of this post (and the subsequent posts). From where did I get “Solus Christus”? “Sola” is the Latin word for “alone” or “only,” and during the Reformation, five Latin sola-statements (commonly called the “Five Solas”) emerged. These were intended to summarize the Reformers’ basic theological principles and distinctions from Roman Catholic theology. The Five Solas are sola fide (“by faith alone”), sola scriptura (“by Scripture alone”), sola gratia (“by grace alone”), soli deo gloria (“glory to God alone”), and, finally, solus Christus (“through Christ alone”). Since Advent focuses our hearts and minds on the coming of Christ and the hope of redemption through Him alone, I thought it a fitting title for a set of Advent meditations.

In the following days leading up to Christmas, you will find a daily Scripture reading and some reflection (from a Reformed perspective) on what it tells us about the incarnation of Jesus and His glorious work of redemption. My prayer is that they will magnify the glory of Christ in your daily devotional time and that they will reset your focus away from cultural Christmas norms and back on “the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich.

Advent starts tomorrow, so check back here for the first devotional.

By His Grace,
Taylor

Friday, November 15, 2013

The God Who Created Everything

One of my privileges as GCPC's associate pastor is to lead our youth group. I love our youth, and being with them on Sunday nights has become one of the highlights of my week. They are a sharp bunch, who are a joy to teach (and we have a blast playing games together). In our study together, I have been endeavoring to help them become even more solidified in their faith--to take ownership of it for themselves--especially since they are approaching high school and college looms in the not-so-distant future. To that end, we are in a teaching series called "The God Who is There." It's structure and much of its content are based on D. A. Carson's excellent book with the same title: The God Who is There. I have made a number of changes to various parts because of the needs of my youth group and because of some disagreements with Carson. Overall, however, his book is excellent and well-worth your time.

Over the next months (perhaps longer), when I finish a section, I will post some highlights on here, and recently we just finished studying Ge. 1-2 together. Now, there are a lot of directions we could have gone with this creation account, and there are a lot of topics that we could have studied in it. Many of those directions and most those topics can be hotly debated in Christian circles, and I have an opinion on almost all of them that I believe is consistent with Scripture. I suppose we could have spent a lot of time studying the various opinions on those topics and I could have given them mine, but I decided to follow Carson and Francis Schaeffer's advice and narrow the focus. Instead of trying to talk about everything that Ge. 1-2 does or can say, we have focused on what it must say in order for the rest of the Bible to be true and have any intelligibility at all. These chapters set up the rest of Scripture, and there are many doctrines and foundations about God and man established here that are crucial for the rest of the Bible to make any sense at all. We focused on those essential things in our study, and I have left the rest for them to work out with their parents and in their own study.

Focusing on these essentials also gave me the opportunity to teach our youth about giving charity to Christians who disagree with them on non-essential matters. We have talked at length about how these core doctrines are essential foundations in Ge. 1-2 around which all Christians must unite because without them we do not have Christianity at all. We have also talked a lot about how we must give charity to Christians who disagree with us about doctrines that fall outside these essential foundations. Now, that is not to say that we should not have strong opinions about those doctrines. I do, and I have told our youth that I want them to study those topics on their own and with their parents to figure out what they believe regarding them. But, we must not let our opinions divide us from other Christians when those opinions concern non-essential matters. We can have friendly debates about them, but, at the end of the day, we need to stand side-by-side on the core doctrines that Ge. 1-2 must say for the rest of the Bible to be true and give charity to our Christian brothers and sisters on other matters.

Okay, you are probably wondering by now what I believe the core, essential doctrines are. (Here, I have basically followed Carson with only a few minor changes.) There are ten:
  1. Ge. 1:1 -- God simply is: The Bible does not begin by trying to prove God's existence. It begins with God, and He is the presuppositional foundation of everything. Our culture today often demands that we prove God exists because it assumes that man the ultimate measure and center of everything. This way of thinking basically started with Rene Descartes: "I think, therefore I am." That is a very man-centered way of thinking. The Bible, on the other hand, would say, "God thinks (and speaks), therefore I am." It puts God at the center of everything, and we see that right from the beginning. Now, I am not trying to say that we should not be able to give good, reasoned arguments for God's existence. We need to meet people where they are when we talk to them about Jesus, but ultimately a Christian does not consider himself to be the measure of everything or the center of anything. God is the measure of all things and at the center of everything.
  2. Ge. 1:1 -- God made everything that is not God: This simple truth has a couple of important implications:
    1. It means there is an irreducible distinction between the Creator and the creatures. His existence is self-existence and ours is completely derivative of and dependent on Him. Everything in the universe is dependent on God to exist. God, however, does not depend on anything to exist except Himself.
    2. It means this universe is not an accident, and it has a purpose. If there is no God, then there is no purpose to this universe and no purpose to our lives. But, if God exists and created the universe, then it has an ultimate purpose and our lives have a purpose in it. Without God there is no meaning to life. With God, there is deep meaning and purpose to life, and He shows us what that is throughout the rest of Scripture.
  3. Taking the account as a whole -- There is only one God: Most of the creation myths of the ancient world said that there were many gods that battled for power and the universe was the fallout from those battles. The Bible clearly tells us there were not multiple gods at the beginning vying for power. There is one. The Bible and Christianity are essentially and necessarily monotheistic. Yet, even from the beginning we see hints of a complexity to God. He is the triune God, and we get hints of this complexity even in these first two chapters: "The Spirit hovered..." "Let us make man in our image..."
  4. How does God create? What does He do in Ge. 1:28? He speaks. God is a talking God: He spoke to create, and He spoke to man. He is a talking God; not an abstract God. This is important because God is going to speak a lot in the rest of Scripture (indeed, the Bible is God's Word), and He even speaks today through the Bible by the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. The Bible and Christianity have no room for deism or any of its flavors. The Bible presents a very personal God, not one who does not pay any attention to His creation.
  5. Ge. 1:31 (and at the end of the other creation days) -- God made everything good because He is good: In its original state, creation was good and perfect because it reflected the goodness and perfection of its Creator. Now, if you were reading the Bible for the first time and you started in Ge. 1, you would look at the world around you and wonder, "What happened?" We get the answer to that question in Ge. 3. That account and the original goodness of God's creation set up the history of redemption that the rest of the Bible records. They set up Jesus' work from Ge. 3:15 onward, which will one day be consummated when He returns to usher in the new heavens and new earth (cf. Re. 21). The path from this beginning in Genesis to the end prophesied in Revelation is the path we will follow as we learn about the God who is there.
  6. Ge. 1:26-27 -- God created man distinct from all other creatures and in His image: God made humans in His image, and the account emphasizes the special creation of Adam and Eve far more than any other creature. Humans are creatures and have much in common with the other creatures, but humans were specially created as the image of God, which makes them distinct from all other creatures (even angels), gives them unique dignity, and allows them to relate to God. Furthermore, humans are not an accidental stage or a step in the development of life that is moving to something better. They are the apex of God's creation.
  7. Ge. 2:1-3 -- God rested and designated one day in seven for our rest: God rested from His creative activity when He completed it and designated one day in seven to be a day of rest His images. This means that the Lord's Day (the Sabbath) is not just a rule that God gave to sinful people because they needed it as sinners. It means that God wanted man to rest one day in seven even when man was perfect. Rest is important to God. He wants us to work, certainly, and we will talk about that soon, but He also wants us to rest.
  8. Ge. 1:28; 2:15 -- God made man to work: God made man to work and have dominion, which reflects His work and dominion (albeit, derivatively) and makes man His stewards in this world. Work is not a curse. Work is part of how God created us in the first place. The reason our work is so frustrating and sometimes feels like a curse now, is because of sin and the fall. But, work itself is good. When we work, so long as our work does not violate God's commands, we are doing what we were designed to do, and it is glorifying to Him.
  9. Ge. 1:27; 2:24 -- God made humans male and female: God made humans male and female, and God designed them for each other--nothing in this world can complete a man like a woman and nothing in this world can complete a woman like a man. They are different, yet complementary, and we cannot ignore either of those without breaking down human culture. Furthermore, when they come together in a marriage union, they become one flesh--a new unit--which sets up the Bible's view of marriage, the family, and even how we understand Christ's relationship to the Church (cf. Eph. 5:22ff).
  10. Ge. 2:25 -- God created humans perfect: God created humans perfect, innocent, and in harmony with Him and the rest of creation. This "naked" does not just mean they had no clothes on. It means they had nothing at all to hide. They were completely innocent. What would it be like never to have told a lie, had a lustful thought, committed idolatry, or committed any other sin? We cannot imagine such innocence, and it is our lack of innocence that causes us to hide who we really are from almost everyone (if not everyone). Adam and Eve, in their original state, knew none of that. They were completely innocent, and therefore could be naked (emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically) and unashamed before each other. The rest of the Bible describes God's work of redemption that is relentlessly pushing towards a time when His people will be in that state if innocence again in the new heavens and new earth (cf. Re. 21-22).
There you have it. Those are what I believe (again, mostly agreeing with Carson) to be the core essentials of Ge. 1-2 around which Christians must unite and without which the rest of the Bible is unintelligible. Do you agree? Is there anything you would say I am missing?

By His Grace,
Taylor

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Love and God's Glory

"5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was." ~ Jn. 11:5-6

In a previous post, I wrote a meditation on Jn. 11, focusing particularly on how Jesus responds to our pain. I mentioned in that post that Mary and Martha thought their message--"Lord, he whom You love is ill"--would compel Jesus to come heal Lazarus immediately, but Jesus had something else in mind--something more loving than healing Lazarus. That "something" was the topic of my sermon from Jn. 11:1-15, 38-45 on November 3, 2013.

The basic thesis of the sermon is that God shows us His agape love by manifesting His glory before us, and by doing so, He shows us how we show agape love to others--Christians, our enemies, and everyone in between. You can listen to the sermon on my church's website or, if you like, read the transcript. I pray that it encourages you, displays Jesus clearly to you, and helps you think about how you can show agape love to those in your field of influence.

By His Grace,
Taylor