White Horse Inn Blog

Reflections on The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited, by Scot McKnight (Zondervan, 2011)

Many of us were raised in churches where the presentation of the gospel meant explaining how you “get saved.” “If you were to die tonight, and Jesus asked, ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’, what would you answer?” If you shared the gospel, that meant that you told someone that they were sinful and separated from God, but that God sent his Son to die for our sins and by accepting him as Lord and Savior they could know that they would go to heaven when they die. The goal was to get as many people as possible to make a decision. That’s what it meant to present the gospel. That’s why D. L. Moody said, “I can write the gospel on a dime.” More recently, a noted evangelist said, “The only theology you need is whatever you can say to an unbeliever in an elevator.” In my youth I passed out a tract to non-Christians that offered the Plan of Salvation. The last page had a contract that the reader could sign with Jesus, guaranteeing salvation to the signatory.

Like many other Christians, Reformed people typically wince at this approach. We do so for a variety of reasons. Many of those reasons coincide with Scot McKnight’s concerns. However, I wonder if he quite gets us to where we need to be. So let me begin by summarizing his arguments.

What is the gospel? According to The King Jesus Gospel, it is the announcement that Jesus Christ, Messiah and Lord, is the resolution to the Story of Israel. Unpacking that is the burden of these 150 pages.

First the author sketches a portrait of what he’s trying to correct. “Evangelism that focuses on decision short circuits and—yes, the word is appropriate—aborts the design of the gospel, while evangelism that aims at disciples slows down to offer the full gospel of Jesus and the apostles” (18). Basically, the truncated gospel creates a “salvation culture,” not a “gospel culture.” More than “evangelicals” in the purest etymological sense, purveyors of the first are “soterians” or “salvationists” who think that the gospel is what you find in the average evangelistic tract. However, a “gospel culture” arises when believers are immersed in the Story of Jesus, which itself is embedded in the Story of the Bible/Israel. The “soterians” don’t even need the Old Testament for their gospel, as illustrated in the honest question the author received by email: “What is good news about the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the descendant of David?’” (24). Evangelicals are good at moving people from “The Members” (in liturgical traditions) to “The Decided.” That’s important. Yet both belong to a “salvation culture,” where the chief question is how one is saved. Only a “Gospel culture” moves all the way to “The Discipled” (30).

So who are these “soterians”? Are they like Rotarians? Or perhaps aliens from a strange galaxy? At first it seems that he has in mind the typical high-pressure presentations that puts the “restless” back in “Reformed.” However, it turns out that he also has in mind the “New Calvinist” movement. “The Calvinist crowd in the USA—and Piper is the leading influencer in the resurgence of Calvinist thinking among evangelicals—has defined the gospel in the short formula, ‘justification by faith’” (25). Ample space is also taken up with a critique of Greg Gilbert’s What is the Gospel? “…the gospel of Jesus wants more from us than a singular decision to get the sins wiped away so we can be safe and secure until heaven comes” (18).

Chapter Three, “Story to Salvation,” builds an intriguing model. Like three levels of a pyramid, the Story of Israel/Story of Bible is the ground floor. From this emerges the Story of Jesus, then the Plan of Salvation, leading finally to the Method of Persuasion. So we have to start with the Story of Israel/Bible. This isn’t yet the gospel specifically. However, within that broader narrative is the Story of Jesus. This is the gospel. That’s why we don’t really have four gospels in the New Testament, but one gospel from four different evangelists. Evidently, they thought that they were proclaiming the gospel and there’s a lot more there than “Jesus died for your sins.” But “Jesus died for your sins” is obviously there. It’s just that this isn’t the gospel. The main point of the New Testament is that Jesus is because “the Jesus Story completes the Israel Story, it saves” (37). Typical evangelistic approaches turn the pyramid upside down: the Method of Persuasion is the ground of everything: getting people to make a decision. How? By presenting the Plan of Salvation (like the Four Spiritual Laws). If it’s anywhere, the actual Story of Jesus (i.e., the gospel) is in the background and even that has usually left the Story of Israel in the deep-dark past.

Basically, the gospel is this: “What Adam was to do in the Garden—that is, to govern this world redemptively on God’s behalf—is the mission God gives to Israel. Like Adam, Israel failed, and so did its kings. God sent his Son to do what Adam and Israel and the kings did not (and evidently could not) do and to rescue everyone from their sins and systemic evil and Satan (the adversary). Hence, the Son is the one who rules as Messiah and Lord” (35). It also includes the consummation (36). (He offers a rich, extended summary on 148-153). Although the gospel itself is the Story of Jesus, without the Story of Israel there is no gospel and “if we ignore that story, the gospel gets distorted, and that is just what has happened in salvation cultures” (36). The “Plan of Salvation” is rooted in the gospel, but it isn’t the gospel.

To put it in terms of Reformed interpretation, McKnight is wrestling here with the relationship of the ordo salutis (salvation applied to individuals here and now) to the historia salutis (the history of redemption). Properly, he wants to ground the former in the latter, not vice versa. The “Plan of Salvation” leads to justification, but not to the whole life of discipleship; for that you need the whole gospel (40). “The Plan of Salvation and the Method of Persuasion have been given so much weight they are crushing and have crushed the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus. This has massive implications for the gospel itself” (43). “Nothing proves this more than the near total ignorance of many Christians today of the Old Testament Story. One reason why so many Christians today don’t know the Old Testament is because their ‘gospel’ doesn’t even need it!” (44).

Turning in chapter 4 to Paul’s gospel message, the author focuses on the apostle’s “classic summary” in 1 Corinthians 15, which he said he received from apostolic gospel tradition. The gospel is the Jesus Story (Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection and post-resurrection appearance), grounded in the Story of Israel (“…according to the scriptures”). “Instead of our ‘four spiritual laws,’ which for many holds up our salvation culture, the earliest gospel concerned four ‘events’ or ‘chapters’ ” (49). “To put this together: the gospel is to announce good news about key events in the life of Jesus Christ. The gospel for Paul was to tell, announce, declare, and shout aloud the Story of Jesus Christ as the saving news of God” (50). Of course, Paul’s gospel unpacks thee implications. “Salvation flows from the gospel.” He died “for our sins” (51). “Jesus died with us (identification), instead of us (representation and substitution), and for us (incorporation into the life of God)” (51). It’s not just the cross, but the burial and resurrection, that receive equal attention (54). (I would add, his ascension and return!) The goal of it all in 1 Cor 15 is that finally, in union with Christ, “humans will be doing exactly what God intended for his creation. God will be God and we will be God’s people—and the whole Story will be about God” (56-57).

So where did things go wrong? “How Did Salvation Take Over the Gospel?”, asks chapter 5. Like the authors of his two forewords (N. T. Wright and Dallas Willard), the Reformation is for McKnight the turning point from the glory days of a “gospel culture” to a “salvation culture.” The early era of the creeds were extrapolations of 1 Corinthians 15. “In fact, denial of the creeds is tantamount to denying the gospel itself because what the creeds seek to do is bring out what is already in the Bible’s gospel” (65). From Paul to Nicea we see a gospel culture. He acknowledges that it wasn’t all blue skies: Constantine, the crusades, etc.. But it was a gospel culture (70). Augustine got the ball rolling, but the Reformation began to shift the focus from the Jesus Story to salvation (McKnight focuses on the Augsburg and Geneva confessions) (70-73). “When I read today’s thin and superficial reductions of the gospel to simple points, I know that that could never have happened apart from the Reformation” (71). Not that the Reformers would have done this. “In fact, no one can read either Luther or Calvin and not observe that they operated with both a profound gospel culture and a profound salvation culture. I have no desire to blame them or the Reformation for the soterians or a ‘salvation culture.’” But the seeds were there for a shift “from the story to soteriology” (73). All that was left was the experiential focus of Wesley and the conversionistic impulse that is also a strength of evangelicalism (74-75). “From the enhancement of a gospel culture with a profound emphasis on salvation we have now arrived at the ability for a person to be able to say he or she has had the right experience” (75). (It’s interesting that he draws in this context on Dallas Willard, who hardly focuses on the Story over personal experience!)

After discussing “the Gospel in the Gospels” (ch. 6), McKnight focuses on the gospel according to Jesus (ch. 7). Much of this I recall from an insightful article he wrote for Christianity Today exploring the tendency to pit Jesus (and the kingdom) against Paul (and salvation). Taking a step back from myopic debates that distort the message of both figures, McKnight thinks that the gospel as the Story of Jesus brings them together in a harmonious whole. “Evangelism, what is it? To ‘evangelize’ or to ‘gospel’ is to tell the Story of Jesus as a saving story that completes Israel’s Story” (112). This encompasses the kingdom and personal salvation.

Chapter 9 explores “Gospeling Today,” which is usually different from how it was done in Acts. “The difference can be narrowed to this single point: the gospeling of Acts, because it declares the saving significance of Jesus, Messiah and Lord, summons listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord, while our gospeling seeks to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as the Savior. We are not creating a false alternative here. The latter can be done within the former, but much of the soterian approach to evangelism today fastens on Jesus as (personal) Savior and doges Jesus as Messiah and Lord…the gospeling of the apostles in the book of Acts is bold declaration that leads to a summons while much of evangelism today is crafty persuasion” (133-134).”

However, if we read the Story of Jesus in the light of the Story of Israel, we can see that Jesus came as Israel’s Messiah to satisfy her most pressing need for a King and a Lord. “Remember that the fundamental solution in the gospel is that Jesus is Messiah and Lord; this means that there was a fundamental need for a ruler, a king, and a lord. The pressing need of the Jews of Jesus’s day was for the Messiah-King and the Messiah-King’s people in the Messiah-King’s land” (137).

Finally, the author fleshes out what this gospel drama—the Jesus Story—means for discipleship, how it creates a “Gospel culture.” First, we must become People of the Story (153-154). Start with the beginning of the book and find yourself in the Story of Israel as it winds its way to the Story of Jesus. Following the church calendar helps with this. Second, we also need to become People of the Church’s Story. “Make a decision to know our story from Adam to the newest baptized Christian in your church” (156). Read the creeds and confessions (156). All of this will help believers to develop counter stories to individualism, consumerism, nationalism, moral relativism, scientific naturalism, New Age, postmodern tribalism, salvation by therapy (157). Third, embrace the Story. The author attaches an especially useful appendix with summary statements in the New Testament defining “the Gospel.” A second appendix, taken from Justin Martyr’s First Apology, makes less sense. In that classic citation, the early church father explains what happened in early Christian worship, focusing on preaching, prayer and sacrament.

Evaluating The Arguments

There are many things to admire about The King Jesus Gospel. While affirming evangelicalism’s zeal in moving people from members to deciders, “the gospel” has been reduced to “personal salvation” and the result is that all of our strategies are bent on getting “decisions” (26). Reformed folks share the same concern. Christ is both Savior and Lord: you can’t embrace one without the other. And we don’t make him Savior and Lord; he is Savior and Lord whether we embrace him or not. The goal of evangelism in our churches is to make disciples, not just converts. That’s why we don’t focus on a striking conversion experience, but on Christ, and emphasize the Christian life as a constant living out of our baptism, in the communion of saints. Lifelong discipleship is not an individualistic affair, but a team sport.

Furthermore, we emphasize that the ordo salutis (application of redemption)—what the author calls “the Plan of Salvation”—arises out of the history of redemption (historia salutis)—the Story of Jesus, which emerges in the Story of Israel. (My stated goal in my systematic theology, The Christian Faith, is to reintegrate these coordinates by the rubric of drama-doctrine-doxology-discipleship.) The prophets pave the way for Jesus’s claim that he is this solution, the author argues (137). Indeed! Commentaries from John Calvin to Don Carson emphasize that the whole Bible is to be read as one unfolding story from promise (Story of Israel) to fulfillment (Story of Jesus). Reformed exegetes regularly lament the place of the Old Testament in contemporary preaching and evangelism, turning to it mostly for edifying examples to imitate (or to shun). Even the exegesis that McKnight offers concerning Jesus’ temptation as the recapitulation of Adam’s and Israel’s (154) is standard in Reformed commentaries (as well as others).

The abstraction of doctrine (like what McKnight calls the Plan of Salvation) from the Story tends to push out not only the Old Testament but the Holy Spirit and the church. I can’t help be feel that what we really need is not to put the Plan of Salvation somewhere else other than the gospel (especially if that includes justification and the new birth), but question aspects of what many evangelicals mean by the very idea. I can only add a hearty amen when the author writes, “To make this more serious, what we are in most need of today, especially with a generation for whom the Plan of Salvation doesn’t make instinctive sense, is more gospel preaching that sets the context for the Plan of Salvation ” (40).

When the Bible talks about “getting saved” (which it never does in precisely those terms), the focus is on the Triune God saving sinners through the twists and turns of redemptive history, from one end of the book to the other. Typically, where the Bible sweeps me into its grand story of redemption in Christ, many evangelistic presentations reduce that grand story to “me and my personal relationship with Jesus.” We talk about the gospel as an announcement—a promise—that is revealed as a grand drama that unfolds from Genesis 3:15 to the close of Revelation. The gospel isn’t an offer to appropriate, decide, or contract for with Jesus. It’s an announcement—a declaration—of God’s saving accomplishment in Jesus Christ. Promised in the Old Testament, the gospel is fulfilled in the New. The call to repent and believe is not the gospel, but the proper response to the gospel. In fact, the gospel is not a call to do anything—even to believe. The gospel itself is simply an announcement that we are therefore called to believe.

McKnight helpfully makes the point in several places that the gospel is a story, an announcement, a declaration, and not a series of “steps” for us to follow to “get saved.” But here’s where he gets confusing. In spite of this point, he still thinks that what he calls the Plan of Salvation and Method of Persuasion are importantly related to the gospel. These phrases are a bit unfamiliar to Reformed ears. Where we typically talk about the Spirit’s application of redemption through the gospel itself, most evangelicals speak of our appropriating, actualizing, or making Jesus our Savior and Lord. God offers us the package, but our new birth depends on something we do, at least our decision. McKnight still seems to follow this way of speaking about “…what that person must do in order to get saved” (38) and appropriating salvation by “making a personal commitment to Jesus Christ” (28). No wonder, then, he wants to distinguish this from the gospel.

From Bavinck to Berkhof, Reformed theologians have lamented the excesses of a pietism and revivalism that threaten to reduce the gospel to a personal decision or crisis experience. So how exactly does the Reformation get saddled once again with a tragic narrowing of the gospel to the “four spiritual laws” with the goal of making mere deciders (converts) who know Jesus as Savior rather than disciples who embrace him as Lord? McKnight acknowledges that there were some flaws in the pre-Reformation “Gospel Culture” (Constantine, the crusades, etc.). He also acknowledges that the Reformers wouldn’t agree with everything that “salvation culture” implies. Yet, much like N. T. Wright, he seems to think that he if we would just go “back to the Bible to find the original gospel” as he has, we’d get it right (24). The history of exegesis is reduced to the categories of “gospel culture” and “salvation culture.” Also as in Professor Wright’s work, The King Jesus Gospel offers sweeping assertions about the Reformation without serious engagement. I can’t imagine that he has explored the commentaries of the Reformers or the history of Reformed biblical theology in any depth. No harm done for having different interests, but one shouldn’t then pile with one more straw-man portrait.

Even when he “damns with faint praise,” the author misses the goal of at least Lutheran and Reformed branches: “The singular contribution of the Reformation, in all three directions—Lutheran, Reformed, and Anabaptist—was that the gravity of the gospel was shifted toward human response and personal responsibility and the development of the gospel as speaking into that responsibility” (71). This confuses the Reformation’s interest with pietism, which was a completely different kettle of fish. The former focused on what the Triune God has done to accomplish salvation for sinners, not on “human response” and what I’m supposed to do to “get saved.”

Though largely respectful, McKnight takes aim especially at John Piper and Greg Gilbert as examples of “soterists.” I won’t presume to speak for these brothers, except to say that the author’s critique appears to lift a few statements as “Exhibit A.” For example, when Piper says that the gospel is “justification by faith,” he is speaking short-hand. The Reformers often did the same, yet they didn’t even come close to the author’s description of decision-oriented “soterism.” The justification of the ungodly is as much an event in the history of salvation (Story of Israel/Jesus) as it is the application of Christ’s imputed righteousness to believers. We simply don’t talk about “Plan of Salvation” evangelism in the first place. That is a different way of doing evangelism than the Lutheran and Reformed approach, centering as it does on the gospel as the announcement of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection for the salvation of the world. Those who believed this gospel were baptized and joined the church, regularly meeting together for the apostles teaching, the Supper, and common prayer (Ac 2:32).

The great thing about the author’s treatment of Jesus and Paul is that the Story of Jesus indeed encompasses the kingdom emphasis along with Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. However, he doesn’t seem to allow the same space for the benefits (like justification) in the definition of the gospel itself that he opens up for the kingdom. Without justification, Christ’s messianic reign and kingdom are not necessarily good news.

In this light, I worry about forcing a choice between the gospel as the Story of Jesus and the Plan of Salvation (if the latter means justification and new birth, for example). The one is still too broad to specify the saving announcement and the latter is too narrow—indeed, somewhat distorting (understood the way McKnight describes it, as akin to the Four Spiritual Laws). McKnight does a great job with 1 Corinthians 15, but there Paul clearly includes the benefits of Christ’s saving work (forgiveness, justification, resurrection) with Christ’s Story as the gospel. In fact, our story (how he saves us) is bound up with his story in that passage. If 1 Corinthians 15 is a summary of the gospel (and I agree that it is), then wouldn’t it be arbitrary to say that the details about Christ’s death and resurrection are the gospel while the benefits for us, as important as they are, are not the gospel? There are just too many passages, here and elsewhere, that make Christ’s work (living, dying and rising again in history) and its effects for us inseparable aspects of the gospel. “He was crucified for our sins and raised for our justification” (Rom 4:25). The dramatic story of Christ and the doctrine that interprets its significance for us are inseparable aspects of the same gospel.

Typically, Reformed and Lutheran theologies speak about “the gospel in the narrow sense” (something like 1 Cor 15:2-5 and Rom 4:25) and “…in the broader sense,” encompassing all of the promises that God fulfilled in Christ, including the gift of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection of the body, and all of the other benefits of our union with Christ.

So we already have the categories that make these points: promise and fulfillment, historia salutis and ordo salutis, and the gospel in the narrower and broader senses. To me, at least, these distinctions are less capable of reductionism. The gospel in the New Testament is neither “Repent and believe” (that’s the call to embrace the gospel) nor “Jesus is the Solution to Israel’s Story.” It’s not even that Jesus is Lord, the Messiah-King. This announcement is as ambiguous without the news of justification as is the news of justification apart from the Story of Israel and Jesus. Jesus’ lordship entails judgment and wrath as well as justification and grace. So there is plenty of reductionism to go around. McKnight is mostly right, I believe, but I’m concerned that his definition of the gospel is too general in one sense (“The Story of Jesus”) and too reductive in another (“Messiah-King-Lord” vs. “Justifying High Priest”). What’s wrong with staying with the integrating rubric of “Prophet, Priest, and King,” interpreted within the horizon of Israel’s story? Penal substitution not as the only aspect of his atoning work but as the sine qua non of his victory of the powers and principalities, vindication of his moral government, and recapitulation of Adam’s failed headship? Why the false choices?

Another danger in reducing the gospel to the Jesus-Story-as-Solution-to-the-Israel-Story is that it fails to account adequately for why the gospel is good news to Gentiles. “Now this might seem simplistic,” the author says, “but any reading of the Prophets, former or latter and major and minor, will show that the problem for the Story of Israel was a resolution to Israel’s and Judah’s problems” (137). Indeed, that’s a big part of it, but don’t the apostles ground the “mystery of the church” in the prophetic promise of Israel’s Messiah as the answer to the whole world’s problems? What about all those wonderful prophecies of a remnant from the nations streaming to Zion?

The Story of Israel sets us up for the Story of Jesus: true enough—and not only true, but just as crucial as McKnight suggests. However, he says, that what is central to the gospel “is that Jesus is Messiah and Lord.” This was “the pressing need of the Jews of Jesus’ day: the Messiah-King and the Messiah-King’s people in the Messiah-King’s land.” This is a salutary point, frequently made in our circles. However, like N. T. Wright, McKnight seems to give too much credit to what the Jews of Jesus’ day were expecting, as if it were basically what the prophets and Jesus had in mind. Clearly it wasn’t, since Jesus regularly upbraids not only the religious leaders but his own disciples for missing the point, thinking that he was coming to restore the nation to its former glory, renewing the Sinai covenant.

If Gentiles are in themselves strangers to the covenants of promise, God’s enemies, “unclean,” and already under judgment, of what relevance is the news, “Finally, Israel has a King who will bring things around in the land!”? I agree that we Gentiles have to be immersed in the Story of Israel; we get in the covenant on Jewish shirt-tales, as it were. We’re the workers in the vineyard who came at the end of the day, the Johnny-come-latelies. However, unlike those to Jewish audiences, the gospel sermons to Gentiles in Acts and descriptions of the gospel in the epistles don’t merely rehearse the history of Israel; they proclaim Christ as the Savior of the world, from judgdment, sin and death, by Christ’s own death-judgment and resurrection-justification. The context of their repentance is idolatry. Somewhere N. T. Wright has written that the tragic problem that confronts Israel at Jesus’ advent is that Israel too is found to be “in Adam.” That’s exactly right. Being “in Adam” universalizes the plight. We dare not skip over Israel, but the Pauline contrast is being “in Adam” versus being “in Christ.”

Surely the reign of the Messiah-King is key in the prophets, but the way in which he exercises this reign is inextricably linked to his priesthood. By fulfilling the law, bearing their sins, clothing them in his righteousness, giving them his Spirit, and returning to make all things new, this Messiah will indeed accomplish what Adam and Israel have failed to do. I would want to press the author a bit more on what he means when he adds, “So he sends us east of Eden into the world with the same task” of being priest-kings in his garden” (138). So is our mission the same as Christ’s? Are we recapitulating Adam and Israel, bearing the curse, and by our resurrection securing the restoration of all things? Is Jesus really the “Last Adam,” who does all of this for us, or the model for how we are to complete his redeeming work? I may be reading too much into that statement, but it would be interesting to hear more about that point. In spite of clear echoes of N. T. Wright throughout The King Jesus Gospel, McKnight is less confident in the “gospel and empire” thesis: namely, that the main thing in saying “Jesus is Lord” is to specifically challenge Caesar and his empire. “Let’s keep in mind that no one would ever deny that an implication of the gospel declaration that Jesus is Lord is that Caesar is not. The issue here is how conscious, overt, and intentional this anti-imperial theme is to the gospeling of the first Christians,” especially in light of Paul’s remarks about ordained powers in Romans 13 (142-144).

Finally, I was looking forward to the last chapter: “Creating a Gospel Culture.” After all, I wholeheartedly agree that a gospel that takes its narrative habitat seriously and connects individual believers to Israel and the Triune God’s purposes for history will create a very different kind of community than one that’s based on individual decisions. However, I didn’t find what I was expecting. It wasn’t what was there, but what was missing, that puzzled me. Sure, we need to become People of the Story and all, reading the Bible cover to cover, but all of his concrete suggestions for this were basically about the individual believer. Nothing about the sacraments, church membership and discipline—especially odd in light of the Justin Martyr appendix that focused on these ordinary means by which God “creates a gospel culture.” McKnight says, “As Dallas Willard has argued for decades, God transforms us through a vision, our intention, and the means God provides—the spiritual disciplines” (159). This seems hardly capable of creating a less individualistic and more integrated gospel culture than its “soterian” alternative.

I would encourage likely critics of The King Jesus Gospel to hear out the argument, setting caricatures and false choices to one side. There is a lot in this book that should resonate with Reformed Christians. Whatever inaccuracies in his description of the views of others who deserve better, Scot McKnight is reacting against a serious weakness of contemporary evangelism that plays out in church life abundantly. To enthusiastic readers of the book, I’d caution against exchanging one set of reductionism for another. Let’s not polarize into even more extreme camps of “story-people” and “doctrine-people”; “kingdom” and “personal salvation”; “Jesus is Lord” and “Jesus is Savior.” We can all be evangelical soterians, rejoicing in the gospel as the Story of Jesus that proclaims the only one who saves us from our sins. Despite my concerns, this is a great starter for some remarkably important conversations.

Social Justice: Social Gospel?
September / October 2011

In this issue, we shift gears in Matthew 28:18-20, taking up an important discussion of the gospel and social justice. We believe that a Reformation understanding of law and gospel, two-kingdoms theology, and the uniqueness of the task given by God to the church should be brought to bear on this sometimes controversial topic. Our editor-in-chief Michael Horton helps us recognize that the commission and the commandment each has its own logic, means, and application, and that these differences must be recognized so that each one can flourish as God intends. Seminary professor David VanDrunen explains the difference between the church as an institution with offices and means of grace and the church as an organism, or a community of faith and life. Next, Kim Riddlebarger, pastor of Christ Reformed Church in Anaheim and White Horse Inn co-host, spells out the debates concerning eschatology—in particular, amillennialism—that frequently underwrite discussions about the role of the church in relation to culture. Then another White Horse Inn co-host, Ken Jones, also pastor of Glendale Missionary Baptist Church, offers a well-informed discussion of the black church and social justice. And when it comes to realistic strategies for making a difference in this world and loving one’s neighbor, Tim Blackmon—a Christian Reformed minister who serves at the American Protestant Church of The Hague in the Netherlands—encourages us to recover the lost art of hospitality. Finally, looking in passages of Scripture at examples of Jesus’ miracles and service to the poor, Presbyterian pastor Jon Payne reminds us that these events function first as testimonies to Christ’s true status as God’s Messiah.

As you peruse this issue, remember that the gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation. Christ’s liberality and merciful charity to us on the cross does indeed have the power to inspire us to grateful lives of service to the poor and the weak. But remember the words of Lee Iacocca when it concerns the mission of the church, “Keep the main thing the main thing.”

Click here to see the Table of Contents

William Cwirla (LCMS): At issue is the “scandal of particularity,” that Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and that “no one comes to the Father except by him” (John 14:6). Statements like these would be hubris at best, insanity at worst, except for the fact that Jesus died on a cross and bodily rose from the dead.

This is why the Apostle Paul makes the bodily resurrection of Jesus as an historic fact the lynchpin of his apologetic. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:17). If Jesus did not rise bodily from the dead, we could not be sure of any of his claims or the claims of his apostles. They could easily be the work of madmen or ambitious religious zealots. The bodily resurrection of Jesus, an historic fact established by the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw him, touched him, heard him, ate with him, validates Jesus’ claim to be the way, the truth, and the life.

The Buddha didn’t rise from the dead; Mohammed didn’t rise from the dead. No one else but Jesus died and rose. This means we have to take all of his claims seriously, or we will be living in denial of a plain fact of history.

What often lies behind this question is failure to apprehend the paradox that salvation in Christ is both inclusive and exclusive at the same time, and so people charge God with being “unfair.” Jesus is the inclusive Savior of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who drew all into his death when he was lifted up on the cross. “He is the expiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). At the same time, Jesus is exclusively the Savior of the world; the world has no other Savior because the world has no other death that atones for sin.

Michael Brown (URC): The Bible is very clear about the exclusivity of Christianity. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). The apostles subsequently preached this same message: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). But this is precisely what many people in our culture find so scandalous and offensive about Christianity. An objector will often ask, “But isn’t God pleased with the person who lives a good, moral life and sincerely tries to do what is right even if he doesn’t come to God through Jesus Christ? What happens to that person when he dies?”

The answer, according to Scripture, is very simple: the person who truly lives a good and moral life does not need to come to God through Christ at all. A good person is in no danger of God’s judgment and needs no Savior. He has nothing to worry about; when he dies he will go directly to heaven on his own merit.

But the question is not what happens to good people when they die; rather, the question is: What happens to guilty people when they die? The problem is that the standard of goodness and morality is not our own, but God’s, and he demands perfection! Says Paul in Romans 2:13: “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law.” This is something that only Christ has achieved. No one except Jesus has lived a good and moral life that is acceptable to God. This is Paul’s whole argument in Romans 1:18-3:20, namely, that everyone has sinned against God and the whole world is under his wrath. Thus, there are no good people. Our own righteous deeds are not good enough for a holy God who must, by his very nature, demand a righteousness as good as his own. This is what makes Christ the only way to salvation: he is the only true doer of the law. He is the only one who has kept the law perfectly, satisfying all its demands for those who believe (see Rom. 8:1-4).

Still, one might object: But if Jesus is the only way, what about the natives in the deep jungles of South America who have never heard of Jesus? How can God judge people for rejecting Jesus if they have never heard of Jesus?

Again, the biblical answer is rather simple. God will not and cannot punish someone for rejecting Christ who has never heard of Christ. That would be unjust and there is no injustice in God. A person is not condemned for rejecting Jesus of whom they have never heard. Rather, they are condemned for rejecting the Father who has made himself clear to the whole world (see Rom. 1:19-20).

William Cwirla (LCMS): When people say things like that, I always like to ask, “On what basis do you think that? What evidence can you put forward that this statement is true?”

It is true that all religious paths, save one, lead to the same place, but that place isn’t God. All religions, save one, hold that you must work your way to God, whether by your creeds, your conduct, or your worship. This is essentially the religion of the Law, something that all religions, save one, have in common.

The statement presupposes that we are on a search for God, much like a hiking trip through the mountains, and whether we take the high road or the low, we will all ultimately wind up in the same place. Buddhism essentially works this way, and even a surprising number of Christians have been caught up into believing this notion that all paths lead to God as long as you sincerely follow your chosen path.

The path is not ours to define but God’s. Jesus pointed out that the way to destruction is broad, and no one has trouble finding that road, while the way to life is exceedingly narrow, and those who find it are few (Matt. 7:13-14). Christianity is the only religion that is really a non-religion, in the sense that we don’t work to God but God comes all the way to us. “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:4-6). God in Christ does it all.

The narrow door Jesus was speaking of is the narrow door of his own death. We would not seek this door on our own, much less find it. Who in their right minds would construct a religion out of an all-sufficient, all-atoning sacrificial death of the Son of God in which the sinner is justified before God? To the wisdom of the world, this is utter nonsense, not to mention bad for morality in general. That’s why from start to finish, God must do the work of salvation for us. We would not have it this way on our own.

As with everything else in Christianity, it all hangs on the death and resurrection of Jesus. While it is theoretically possible that there are other ways for a sinner to stand justified before God, God has not revealed any. Instead, he sent his only begotten Son who claimed to be the only way to the Father (John 14:6). On its own, that might be an outrageous example of hubris on the part of Jesus. But then, he’s the only One who died and rose bodily from the dead. We’re going to have to take his word on that one.

Jason Stellman (PCA): Well, in a certain sense it is true that all paths lead to God. The Bible teaches that all people, great and small, rich and poor, will stand before their Maker. The problem isn’t getting to God, it’s being accepted by him.

Many today feel that God will happily receive all who stand before him with a smile and a warm hug (R. C. Sproul jokingly calls this view “Justification by Death”). But if we take a few moments to consider who this God is, it becomes necessary to reevaluate our position and question our confidence.

Let’s use the realm of civic justice as an illustration. Suppose there were a judge in a certain town who was known for being an accepting, gregarious fellow in private, and his magnanimous personality spilled over into his work. So when thieves, murderers, and kidnappers stand before him, he just can’t help but love them and let them off with a small slap on the wrist. If this were to happen over and over, the town would rise up and demand justice, wouldn’t they? And rightly so. We all have an inherent sense of right and wrong (which really flares up when we’re the ones wronged!) which tells us that criminals should be punished.

But whatever sense of justice and fairness we share as humans beings is there because we have been made in God’s image. If we think evil should be punished, how much more true is this when we consider God and his standards, his holiness, and his judgment? God is infinitely more pure, just, and offended at sin than we, and therefore his very nature demands that sinners be punished for their actions.

The good news, of course, is that God is also infinitely more gracious and merciful than we, and for this reason he has sent his Son into the world to walk in our shoes, live the life we have failed to live, and die the death that our sins demand. So though it is true that “all paths lead to God,” it is also true that only one of those paths leads to forgiveness and blessing. All others lead to eternal destruction.

From Modern Reformation (March/April 2006): Does God Believe in Atheists?

William Cwirla (LCMS): The problem of suffering (theodicy) is really a matter of the clay critiquing the work of the potter. The question lays a moral problem at God’s feet and then questions the existence of God. “Evil” implies “good” and our ability to discern the difference. Without an external objective standard of good and evil, we would have no ability to speak of evil in the world. Therefore, to call the existence of God into question on account of the presence of evil in the world presupposes a higher standard of the good against which to judge what is and isn’t evil.

The question presupposes that God should run the universe according to our set of rules. If we were God, we wouldn’t permit the presence of evil in the world. This is an anthropocentric view of the universe, as though everything that causes us suffering is necessarily evil.

The question fails to take into account the presence of sin and its cosmic effects. The fall of Adam not only plunged humanity into sin, it also disrupted the inherent harmony of the created order (Rom. 8:18-25). Pain and suffering exists because the inherent harmony of creation has been messed up by sin. Even when human beings don’t have a direct hand in the cause of suffering, say an earthquake or a hurricane, it is nevertheless due to the disruption of creation’s order by sin.

So what is God to do? One thing he doesn’t do, at least on a regular basis, is intervene. He doesn’t block bullets from finding their targets; he doesn’t turn hurricanes away from cities; he doesn’t necessarily keep a meteor from plummeting through the roof of your house. Instead, he restores order to the cosmos by reconciling all things to himself in the death of his Son Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 5:18-19) and bringing all things together under a new Head of creation (Eph. 1:10). In Christ, the God who suffers, “evil” and pain are ultimately employed for good, trumped by the all-reconciling death of Jesus.

We run into trouble with the question of evil and suffering when we attempt to address it apart from the cross of Jesus Christ. Then the discussion becomes a philosophical abstraction, pitting God’s mercy and love against his omniscience and power. The cross of Jesus silences these speculations. Here the Innocent One suffers on behalf of guilty humanity; here God himself bears the ultimate injustice and evil in his own crucifixion which he makes the reconciliation of all things. Jesus Christ, the second Adam and the new Head of creation, sets the disordered universe back into order by his own dying and rising, gathering all things into his death (John 12:32).

In Christ, there is no problem of evil and suffering, for “in all things God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). The existence of God is not negated by the presence of evil. Rather, the presence of evil demonstrates the cosmic reality of sin, ultimately reconciled once and for all in the death of Jesus Christ.

Michael Brown (URC): First, we must understand that God did not create the world evil. The Bible reveals to us that God made all things good. He created humans in true righteousness and holiness. He crowned them with glory and honor and gave them dominion over the works of his hands. Violence, sorrow, and death were not part of man’s original experience; he only knew the blessing of life in God’s good earth. It was not until Adam sinned against God and broke the covenant into which he was placed that the horror of evil, pain, and death came to be a regular part of existence in this world. As a result of the fall, God could have judged the world immediately and plunged all of mankind into the eternal punishment we rightly deserve. It is only because of his great grace that he chose to redeem a people out of this fallen and dark world. That is why this age of suffering continues: God is gathering in his elect until the Last Day. We have the confidence that God is in fact doing this because he sent Christ his Son “who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age” (Gal. 1:4a).

Second, we must understand that while this present evil age continues, God oversees all things by his providence, that is, his constant interaction and intervention with the world he has made. He not only preserves his creatures, but is directing everything to its appointed end, “work[ing] all things according to the counsel of his will” (Eph. 1:11b). He even uses the evil acts of men for his own purpose and glory. Yet, he does so while remaining free from and the just judge of evil. It is this understanding of providence that led Joseph to declare to his brothers who sinned against him: “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20a). What this shows us is that God is both good and sovereign. We are comforted to know that he is always in control and that, as the Heidelberg Catechism puts it, “whatever evil he sends upon me in this vale of tears he will turn to my good; for he is able to do, being Almighty God, and willing also, being a faithful Father” (Q. 26).

Finally, we must understand that the story is not over. Just as this world was once free from evil and pain in the beginning, so shall it be again when the King returns. Paradise lost will be paradise restored, only infinitely greater. This universe will be resurrected to fit the glory of the age to come-an age in which God has promised to dwell with his people and forever keep them from pain, suffering, and evil. As we read in the final chapters of the Bible: “He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:3b-4).

Jason Stellman (PCA): One philosopher claimed that there are many arguments against God’s existence, but this is the only good one! There are a couple ways to approach this question. But before I start apologizing on God’s behalf and defending his actions, we must remember who it is we’re talking about here: the all wise, all powerful, good, and loving God.

We need to be reminded of this because our sinful temptation is to think that God has gotten himself stuck in a corner and we need to reason him out of it. But this is the height of arrogance. “Let God be true,” Paul insisted, “and every man a liar.” God doesn’t need us to get him off the hook! This is crucial to remember: There’s no hook on which God can get stuck from which we must rescue him. If there is a hook, it is we who are stuck on it, not God.

C. S. Lewis used to object to God’s existence for this same reason (all the evil in the world). But then he realized something that many today have never wrestled with: How do I know things are evil or bad? His conclusion was that, in order to be able to recognize evil, he must have some standard of “good” against which he measures everything else. To use his illustration, one cannot recognize a crooked line unless he first has some concept of a straight one. But if there is no God, the very objection to evil loses its force, for if the universe is nothing but the result of random chance, then evil could never be recognized as such.

So that leaves us with the uncomfortable conclusion that there is a God, and this God allows (and in some way ordains) that evil things occur. What do we do with this? I think it is at this point that eschatology becomes very practical. The story into which we have been written is not just a tale about a Shepherd whose sheep got lost and remained that way. Rather, the Christian story is about a God who went to such great lengths to redeem his fallen ones that he sent his own Son to live, die, and rise again for them. Though we are still living in a period of delay, the promise remains that this same Lord Jesus will descend from heaven and put all things right. To Adam it seemed as if Paradise was lost. To us, Paradise feels postponed (though we presently experience it in part). But from God’s perspective and according to his testimony, Paradise has been regained, and the day will come when a new heaven and new earth will descend, and the former things-such as evil and pain-will be remembered no more.

So my point is this: the problem of evil cannot be abstracted from the rest of the story God is telling and considered on its own. All good drama needs a point of crisis, for without this the ending doesn’t appear nearly as glorious.

With J. I. Packer, James M. Boice, Richard Halverson, William Pannell and Michael S. Horton

HORTON: Do you think the complaint that evangelicals in this day and age are shallow and superficial is justified?

BOICE: Yes, I would agree with that complaint. For various reasons I think we are contributing to the very thing we ought to be working against. One reason is that we are so preoccupied with numbers. We’re so interested in getting people to make a profession that we often forget to take the time to explain the content of what it is they are about to profess. I notice, by contrast, that our Lord himself never did that. If anything, he seemed to be afraid of numbers. When the numbers got too high, he asked the tough questions, questions that would weed out those who were following only because it was simply the most exciting thing of the hour to do.

PACKER: I think this is right. There is such a thing as cultural Christianity, a Christianity that only goes skin deep and is taken in because it is part of the culture of your home or the group to which you belong. What you receive in this case, you receive by osmosis, rather than by any sort of thinking. When the time comes and the tough questions are asked your mind begins to wake up and you realize that all you’ve got is the veneer of a “Christian lifestyle” without any deeply rooted convictions at all. Culture Christianity is always a problem at this point. Those who have received it think that they are Christians because of the way that they have been conditioned, when in many cases they still have been converted.

PANNELL: What we have failed to do in many of our Christian circles is to present in a stimulating way real biblical questions. Today, people tend to think that you can go to church, be a Christian, and get along best if you leave your mind in the glove compartment.

HORTON: Could it be that we have a cheap and limited view of God and his grace?

HALVERSON: I certainly think we’ve lost that sense of awe when we talk about God in our modern evangelical culture. I don’t sense awe in many of the evangelical gatherings that I have attended. I have a feeling, for example, that if Jesus was to walk into one of our churches or conventions, that we wouldn’t want to stand up and cheer and sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” I think we should fall immediately to our knees in an attitude of worship. However, today I think we tend to equate noise with praise and worship and that troubles me a great deal (see Amos 5:21-24).

PACKER: I think you’ve hit on something fairly basic here. I think of the two pans of an old fashioned pair of scales. If one goes up, the other goes down. Once upon a time folks new that God was great and that man by comparison was small. Each individual carried around a sense of his own smallness in the greatness of God’s world. However, the scale pans are in a different relation today. Man has risen in his own estimation. He thinks of himself as great, grand and marvelously resourceful. This means inevitably that our thoughts about God have shrunk. As God goes down in our estimation, He gets smaller. He also exists now only for our pleasure, our convenience and our health, rather than we existing for His glory.

Now, I’m an old fashioned Christian and I believe that we exist for the glory of God. So the first thing I always want to do in any teaching of Christianity is to attempt to try and get those scale pans reversed. I want to try and show folks that God is the one of central importance. We exist for His praise, to worship Him, and find our joy and fulfillment in Him; therefore He must have all the glory. God is great and He must be acknowledged as great. I think there is a tremendous difference between the view that God saves us and the idea that we save ourselves with God’s help. Formula number two fits the modern idea, while formula number one, as I read my Bible, is scriptural. We do not see salvation straight until we recognize that from first to last it is God’s work. He didn’t need to save us. He owed us nothing but damnation after we sinned. What he does, though, is to move in mercy. He sends us a Savior and His Holy Spirit into our hearts to bring us to faith in that Savior. Then He keeps us in that faith and brings us to His glory. It is His work from beginning to end. God saves sinners. It does, of course, put us down very low. It is that aspect of the gospel that presents the biggest challenge to the modern viewpoint. But we must not forget that it also sets God up very high. It reveals to us a God who is very great, very gracious and very glorious. A God who is certainly worthy of our worship.

PANNELL: I’m always impressed with the conversation that Jesus had with some of his contemporaries when they asked, “What can we do that we might do the works of God?” The assumption being that whatever God laid on them, they could handle. Jesus responded by saying, “This is the work of God, that you believe on Him who He has sent.” They could no more swallow that than they could any of the other teachings of Jesus. This one stuck in their minds and I think the reason for that is because it lays upon God all the burden of being Savior. And that is just un-American. To think that we would need someone outside ourselves to save us is in violation of the spirit of American independence.

HORTON: Could that be why we don’t frequently hear the preaching of the cross in evangelical churches? If we do hear the cross, it’s only in terms of how much God loves us, but we never really hear why the cross was actually necessary.

PACKER: Well, before we ever start talking about the cross showing us the love of God, we ought to take the time to define what took place on the cross so as to explain why the death of Christ shows us God’s love. Surely the first thing to say is that the achievement of the cross was the putting away of our sins. Had that not happened through the wisdom of God who put His Son in our place, we would have had to pay the price for our sins and that would have been eternal spiritual loss. Thus, the meaning of the cross is that a God, who was my stern judge, has become my loving heavenly Father because He has put away my sins. The Father, through the Son, redeemed the world. So our relationship with God becomes the most important issue we can ever face and the cross of Christ becomes the most momentous event in history, because we have a loving heavenly Father and the Judge who fully satisfies the account of us for our guilt. This is the God-centered way of looking at the cross.

BOICE: But that is the question, how are we going to look at the cross, or mankind, or God. For example, if your basic premise is that God exists to serve mankind and you happen to be going through a period of suffering, is God going to have to solve your problems for him to mean anything to you? The health and wealth gospels that we’ve heard so much about are merely outgrowths of this man-centered religion. However, if you take it the other way around, we’re there for God’s benefit and then He has a purpose even in our suffering. Christianity does not involve our solving everybody’s human problem, but instead involves our showing we can go through human problems in a way that honors God. Until Christians in our country understand that, Christianity is not going to have the impact that it once had, either for revival or for cultural change.

HALVERSON: I feel that this is where we are today. Although we say we believe in God, we really believe in man. I’ve lived in Washington D.C. for thirty years and I hear this all the time. They never verbalize it quite this way, but what they’re saying is, “If we just get the right man in the White House, and the right people in the Supreme Court and Congress, we’ve got the kingdom of God.” This concerns me a great deal.

PANNELL: I think there is a consensus in the world today as never before that the human race needs to be saved. I think that’s what communism and other isms are about. This leads inevitably to a contemporary idolatry called nationalism. To the degree that the church is seduced to these ideologies, it is to that degree also that the church loses confidence in the power of the gospel. And the cross just becomes something you wear around your neck.

HALVERSON: Years ago we had a breakfast in Washington for Malcolm Muggeridge, who as some of you may know is very pessimistic. After giving his speech, one gentleman, who happened to be constitutionally incapable of hearing anything pessimistic, approached him and said, “Brother Muggeridge, you’ve been very pessimistic, can’t you say anything optimistic?” He responded, “Why my friend, I’m very optimistic because my hope is only in Jesus Christ.” He let that response settle for a moment. Then he said this, “Just suppose the apostolic church had pinned its hopes on the Roman empire?” I’ve never been able to forget that. In a day when we are pinning our hope on the good old U.S.A. There’s a little text that came to mean a great deal to me a few years ago when I was preparing to preach an ordination sermon. Jesus said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” I can’t believe he has ever failed, or ever will fail in doing that. So I have to believe he is building his church. The problem is the church we’re building.

From Modern Reformation (May/June 1993): “Beyond Culture Wars”

William Cwirla (LCMS): There is sufficient evidence from the field of archaeology to show that the Bible is historically quite accurate. Even skeptical archaeologists have learned to take the biblical narrative at face value. Of course, this doesn’t prove the Bible to be “true,” only accurate in historic details. But that’s a good place to begin.

The New Testament documents are reliable, first-source historic documents written by eyewitnesses to a unique event history-the incarnation of the Son of God culminating in his death and resurrection. The manuscript evidence gives us a reliable text, far more reliable than any other text from antiquity.

The Gospels are a form of historical narrative. Luke mentions the fact that he did historical research prior to writing his account (Luke 1:1-4). The claim of all these writers is that Jesus died on a cross and rose bodily from the dead three days later. Paul mentions that Jesus was seen risen from the dead by more than five hundred eyewitnesses (1 Cor. 15:6) in addition to the apostles, many of whom went to their death insisting they had seen Jesus risen from the dead. These eyewitnesses had everything to lose and nothing to gain for claiming Jesus was risen. In fact, the religious and political authorities had a vested interest in the contrary, so their testimony was given in view of hostile cross-examination.

This same dead and risen Jesus predicted his own death and resurrection three times before it happened. As baseball pitcher Dizzy Dean once said, “It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it.” Jesus did it. For that reason, we need to take seriously what Jesus says. He says that the Old Testament Scriptures speak of him and teach the way of eternal life (John 5:39). He says that the Scriptures teach his death and resurrection and of repentance and forgiveness in his name (Luke 24:45-47). He promised that his apostles would receive the Holy Spirit who would bring to mind all that he had taught and would guide them into all truth (John 14:26; 16;13). The Apostle Paul writes that the Old Testament Scriptures are the very “breath of God” (2 Tim. 3:16), and Peter similarly writes that the prophets spoke not on their own initiative but as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:21).

The lynchpin for the veracity of the Scriptures is the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is not only the central teaching, it is also the foundation to the truth claims of the Scriptures. If Christ is not raised, then everything that is written in the Bible is suspect. But Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate who died and rose from the dead, points us to the Scriptures which he claims reliably speak concerning himself.

Jason Stellman (PCA): The Westminster Confession of Faith I.4 states that the authority of Scripture does not depend on the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God. In both the Old and New Testaments the Bible declares itself to be the very Word of God: “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether” (Ps. 19:7-9); “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16).

But accepting Scripture’s self-testimony is not simply random, circular reasoning; it’s not something we do in spite of manifold evidence to the contrary (like believing that the Book of Mormon is true because we get a “burning in our bosom” when we read it). Rather, the Bible’s own internal evidence-such as “the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man’s salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof” (WCF I.5)-bears witness to its truthfulness and authority.

But as with the existence of God, believing the Bible’s message is not something we can do without the work of the Holy Spirit within us. We are not passive, neutral observers who weigh the evidence in some objective, disinterested way. Rather, we are, by nature, inclined to evil and hostile to divine things. That’s why all the rational arguments in the world will not convince us to bow before our Creator and submit to his message. Only the power of the Spirit working through the Word can accomplish that.

Next in the series: How can God exist when there is so much evil and pain in the world?

From Modern Reformation (March/April 2006): Does God Believe in Atheists?

Word and Sacrament: Making Disciples of All Nations
July/August 2011

What is the secret key for growth in the Christian life? It is the gospel of the died and risen Savior that gives life, delivered by means of the preached Word, and then signed, sealed, and confirmed by “visible word” in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Teaching and discipline come to bear immediately in a well-ordered church that is growing and maturing. In this issue in our continuing series on “The Great Commission,” we want to help realign the church’s mission to these specific means that Christ ordained for the expansion of his kingdom. Toward this end, Editor-in-Chief Michael Horton sets out our need for catechesis in discipleship-a theme running throughout this issue. Lutheran pastor John Bombaro argues against a “Facebook” Christianity, showing that discipleship necessarily involves a communal setting, including personal representation as being of the essence of Christian disciple-making; and Rick Ritchie helps us think about our choices of media in the church. Pastor Andrea Ferrari and Professor Alex Chediak also discuss churches and children who are coming of age in a Facebook age, while Pastor Nam-Joon Kim relates the extensive discipleship and teaching ministry at Yullin Presbyterian Church in Korea. An interview with J. I. Packer and Gary Parrett further reiterates the importance of catechism, and Presbyterian minister and seminary professor J. V. Fesko persuades us that baptism is a strong link to a lifetime of discipleship.

In the book of Acts, the Great Commission unfolds as the church was born by Word and Spirit and then “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). Word and Sacrament ministry, in other words, is the full mission of the church. This is how God directs our hearts and minds to Christ. It is his rescue mission for the nations. Join us in this July/August timely and vital issue of Modern Reformation!

Click here to see the Table of Contents

William Cwirla (LCMS): We know things in a variety of ways. We know things empirically, the way we know a scientific fact. For instance, we know that water is two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen because we can analyze water and literally take it apart. Since God can’t be measured or tested scientifically, we can’t know of God’s existence that way.

I’ve never been terribly impressed by the various “proofs” for the existence of God. All of them seem to lead to so much logical or philosophical arm wrestling, the God of logical necessities. I think these arguments are much more meaningful to believers than they are to skeptics.

We also know things inductively and retroductively, the way we know facts of history or the way a jury is convinced of a crime “beyond a reasonable doubt” by the evidence. The Apostle Paul writes that the pagans, who do not have the revealed Word, can still know something about God. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:19-20). The Divine Suspect left his fingerprints.

Here, science has unwittingly done a decent job dusting for divine fingerprints. The finely-tuned order of the universe in a delicate balance of universal physical constants, the apparent rarity of Earth as a life-sustaining planet, the wonderful complexity of biological systems, and the intricacies of the genetic code all make a strong case for the existence of God. Like any circumstantial evidence case, there are always alternative explanations, so one can never be absolutely certain in knowing God this way, only reasonably certain.

This sort of natural knowledge of God is also quite limited. We can know of his eternal power and deity, namely that God transcends time and space and that he is omnipotent and omniscient and whatever other “omni” you can think of, but we can’t know anything about his character or person. That must ultimately be revealed to us.

To know Jesus Christ is to know God. He is the fullness of the Deity dwelling among us bodily. This kind of knowing is different from knowing facts about God or studying God the way one studies biology or chemistry. This is knowing in the biblical use of that word, as in entering into a relationship with someone. “This is eternal life, that they know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3).

The Incarnation is the grand revelation of God who’s been at work in, with, and under the created order from the beginning. He shows his face in the face of the Son of the Virgin, the Man of the Cross. If you want to know God, you need to learn from Jesus, the Son of God, the Word made flesh. You can be as certain of the existence of God as you are certain of the existence of the historic figure named Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God, and offered a variety of signs, culminating in his own predicted death and resurrection.

Michael Brown (URC): We know that God exists because he has revealed himself to us. He has done this in two ways: through creation (which we call his general revelation) and Scripture (which we call his special revelation). Many people try to avoid the latter, but no one can escape the former. General revelation is something that all people experience. It is, as Article 2 of The Belgic Confession puts it, “before our eyes as a most beautiful book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many letters leading us to perceive clearly the invisible things of God.” Like a book that tells a story, nature communicates a message-one that is understood by all people irrespective of their location, language, or education. This is precisely what David says in Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their measuring line goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” (Ps. 19:1-4a).

Every day, nature reveals to the world the existence of its Creator. The rising of the sun and the shining of the stars say unequivocally to mankind: You are a creature living in the Creator’s universe. This, as Paul says in Romans 1:19-20, leaves people without excuse: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

Man cannot accuse God of not revealing himself. No one will ever be able to say, You didn’t give me enough evidence, God; I didn’t know that you existed! The fact is that every person knows God exists. Every human being knows something about God’s eternal power and deity by what is clearly perceived in nature. Moreover, as Paul points out in Romans 2:14-15, God has planted in the soul of every human being a basic awareness of God and his law. Calvin called this the sensus divinitatis-an elementary, intuitive perception of God’s existence.

Consequently, before a Christian even opens her mouth to give an argument for the existence of God, the unbeliever already knows that God exists. The unbeliever’s problem is not that he doesn’t know this, but that he hates and suppresses what he already knows to be true. This, according to Paul, is the indictment that God gives to the entire human race when he says: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Rom. 1:18). Thus, “How can I know God exists?” is the wrong question. The question that the unbeliever needs to ask is, “How can I be saved from the wrath of God?”

Jason Stellman (PCA): This is such a profound question, but what makes it especially interesting is the fact that the Bible (which is the primary source of our knowledge about God) never actually argues for his existence. Instead,it presupposes it with the opening words of its first book, Genesis: “In the beginning, God… ” To those who doubt his existence, Psalm 14 just responds, “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”

But when you think about it, it shouldn’t be that surprising that the existence of God is considered to be as central and basic as the Bible implies. After all, we all hold beliefs for which we have no proof and for which we never think to argue (such as the belief that truthfulness is better than lying, or that it is wrong to torture children for fun). Now I’m not saying that the existence of God cannot be demonstrated, it certainly can, but our belief in him is only strengthened by such evidence, it is not founded on it.

Though Scripture, as I said, doesn’t furnish us with arguments for God’s existence, it does appeal to his handiwork as a demonstration of his power and wisdom. Speaking of pagan idolaters, Paul insisted that they “knew God” and had witnessed “his eternal power and divine nature” by observing the wonders of creation. Yet because of the darkness of their hearts men refuse to glorify him, and choose rather to serve creatures instead of the Creator. Man’s “atheism,” therefore, is a farce. His “intellectual doubt” is often a moral refusal to admit what his eyes and heart plainly testify-that there is a God to whom he is accountable.

When you look at it this way, I guess you could turn the issue on its head and argue that God doesn’t believe in atheists.

A. Craig Troxel (OPC): Many people in the West respond to the reality of religious pluralism by affirming that all religions are really the same. But one problem with such a viewpoint is that it seeks to domesticate religions by stripping them of all that is unique about them. Certain beliefs must be sacrificed in order to amalgamate religions into parallel or analogous ways to God. The distinctive elements of the various religions are pured into one flavor-and by an “outsider”-who is an expert and, of course, has our best interest in mind. As Steve Turner puts it tongue-in-cheek, “We believe that religions are basically the same. …They only differ on matters of creation, sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.”

The religion that is least conducive to such reductionism is Christianity, because the person who is least tamable is Christ. You cannot begin to treat Christ as merely a prophet or wise teacher (like Moses, Mohammed, Confucius, or Buddha). Yet in order to assert that the Christian faith is just another brand or label of one all-purpose universal religion, you must essentially gut the Christian faith of all its content, much in the same way that a modern taxidermist removes all of a fish so that hardly anything remains when it is mounted on the wall.

For example, in order to make his point, John Hicks argued in God Has Many Names that Jesus never designated himself as Messiah, never thought of himself as divine, and that the incarnation is a mythical idea applied to Jesus. Jesus gets reduced to being our “saving point of contact” with God. This is a huge distortion of Jesus’ declaration to be “the way, the truth and the life” and that people should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Emphasizing this truth, and the truth of his substitutionary death, resurrection from the dead, and future return is not a static or freeze-dried view of truth. It is the truth that set us free.

Next in the series: How can I know that the Bible is true?

From Modern Reformation (March/April 2006): “Does God Believe in Atheists?”

At the end of 2010 we began launching digital versions of Modern Reformation issues. This allows subscribers (both our print and on-line subscribers) the option of reading the magazine in its fully formatted form across a number of devices. However, we had heard from many subscribers that would like the option of downloading the issues in PDF form so they can read the digital issues of MR when they were not connected to the internet or on other e-reading devices (i.e. Kindle, Nook, etc. that can read imported PDFs). Now that option is available! In the menu bar of the digital issue there is a PDF icon that allows you to download select pages or the entire issue of Modern Reformation.

In order to access all of our digital issues (and now download PDFs), as well as access our entire on-line archive, you must be a current subscriber (print or on-line) to Modern Reformation or a partner of White Horse Inn. (If you currently are a subscriber or partner, but don’t think you have access to our MR site please contact the webmaster.)

Subscribe to Modern Reformation

Become a partner of White Horse Inn.

For a free digital preview edition of our current May/June 2011 issue click on the “mini-flip” version below (or click here if Flash is not enabled)

Please note: These PDFs are not to be made publicly available and to do so violates our Terms of Use.