One of the most sobering and soul-stirring quotes from the pen of Jonathan Edwards:

If true religion lies much in the affections, hence we may learn what great cause we have to be ashamed and confounded before God, that we are no more affected with the great things of religion.

God has given to mankind affections . . . that they might be subservient to man’s chief end, and the great business for which God has created him, that is, the business of religion.  And yet how common is it among mankind, that their affections are much more exercised and engaged in other matters than in religion!  In things which concern men’s worldly interest, their outward delights, their honour and reputation, and their natural relations, they have their desires eager, their appetites vehement, their love warm and affectionate, their zeal ardent; in these things their hearts are tender and sensible, easily moved, deeply impressed, much concerned, very sensibly affected, and greatly engaged; much depressed with grief at losses, and highly raised with joy at worldly successes and prosperity.

But how insensible and unmoved are most men about the great things of another world!  How dull are their affections!  How heavy and hard their hearts in these matters!  Here their love is cold, their desires languid, their zeal low, and their gratitude small.

How they can sit and hear of the infinite height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus, of His giving His infinitely dear Son, to be offered up a sacrifice for the sins of men, and of the unparalleled love of the innocent, and holy, and tender Lamb of God, manifested in His dying agonies, His bloody sweat, His loud and bitter cries, and bleeding heart, and all this for enemies, to redeem them from deserved, eternal burnings, and to bring to unspeakable and everlasting joy and glory–and yet be so cold and heavy, insensible and regardless!

Where are the exercises of our affections proper, if not here?. . . Is there anything which Christians can find in heaven or earth so worthy to be the objects of our admiration and love, their earnest and longing desires, their hope, and their rejoicing, and their fervent zeal, as those things that are held forth to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ?

[ . . .] God has so disposed things in the affair of our redemption, and in His glorious dispensations, revealed to us in the gospel, as though every thing were purposely contrived in such a manner as to have the greatest possible tendency to reach our hearts in the most tender part, and move our affections most sensibly and strongly.  How great cause have we therefore to be humbled to the dust that we are no more affected!

- Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, 51-53.

Jonathan Edwards

Having thus considered the evidence of the proposition laid down, I proceed to some inferences.

1. We may hence learn how great their error is, who are for discarding all religious affections, as having nothing solid or substantial in them. There seems to be too much of a disposition this way, prevailing in this land at this time. Because many who, in the late extraordinary season, appeared to have great religious affections, did not manifest a right temper of mind, and run into many errors, in the time of their affections, and the heat of their zeal; and because the high affections of many seem to be so soon come to nothing, and some who seemed to be mightily raised and swallowed up with joy and zeal, for a while, seem to have returned like the dog to his vomit; hence religious affections in general are grown out of credit with great numbers, as though true religion did not at all consist in them.

Thus we easily and naturally run from one extreme to another. A little while ago we were in the other extreme; there was a prevalent disposition to look upon all high religious affections as eminent exercises of true grace, without much inquiring into the nature and source of those affections, and the manner in which they arose: if persons did but appear to be indeed very much moved and raised, so as to be full of religious talk, and express themselves with great warmth and earnestness, and to be filled, or to be very full, as the phrases were; it was too much the manner, without further examination, to conclude such persons were full of the Spirit of God, and had eminent experience of his gracious influences. This was the extreme which was prevailing three or four years ago. But of late, instead of esteeming and admiring all religious affections without distinction, it is a thing much more prevalent, to reject and discard all without distinction. Herein appears the subtlety of Satan. While he saw that affections were much in vogue, knowing the greater part of the land were not versed in such things, and had not had much experience of great religious affections to enable them to judge well of them, and distinguish between true and false: then he knew he could best play his game, by sowing tares amongst the wheat, and mingling false affections with the works of God’s Spirit: he knew this to be a likely way to delude and eternally ruin many souls, and greatly to wound religion in the saints, and entangle them in a dreadful wilderness, and by and by, to bring all religion into disrepute.

But now, when the ill consequences of these false affections appear, and it is become very apparent, that some of those emotions which made a glaring show, and were by many greatly admired, were in reality nothing; the devil sees it to be for his interest to go another way to work, and to endeavor to his utmost to propagate and establish a persuasion, that all affections and sensible emotions of the mind, in things of religion, are nothing at all to be regarded, but are rather to be avoided, and carefully guarded against, as things of a pernicious tendency. This he knows is the way to bring all religion to a mere lifeless formality, and effectually shut out the power of godliness, and everything which is spiritual, and to have all true Christianity turned out of doors. For although to true religion there must indeed be something else besides affection; yet true religion consists so much in the affections, that there can be no true religion without them. He who has no religious affection, is in a state of spiritual death, and is wholly destitute of the powerful, quickening, saving influences of the Spirit of God upon his heart. As there is no true religion where there is nothing else but affection, so there is no true religion where there is no religious affection. As on the one hand, there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart; where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart; so on the other hand, where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light, that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things. If the great things of religion are rightly understood, they will affect the heart. The reason why men are not affected by such infinitely great, important, glorious, and wonderful things, as they often hear and read of, in the word of God, is undoubtedly because they are blind; if they were not so, it would be impossible, and utterly inconsistent with human nature, that their hearts should be otherwise than strongly impressed, and greatly moved by such things.

This manner of slighting all religious affections, is the way exceedingly to harden the hearts of men, and to encourage them in their stupidity and senselessness, and to keep them in a state of spiritual death as long as they live, and bring them at last to death eternal. The prevailing prejudice against religious affections at this day, in the land, is apparently of awful effect to harden the hearts of sinners, and damp the graces of many of the saints, and stun the life and power of religion, and preclude the effect of ordinances, and hold us down in a state of dullness and apathy, and undoubtedly causes many persons greatly to offend God, in entertaining mean and low thoughts of the extraordinary work he has lately wrought in this land.

And for persons to despise and cry down all religious affections, is the way to shut all religion out of their own hearts, and to make thorough work in ruining their souls.

They who condemn high affections in others, are certainly not likely to have high affections themselves. And let it be considered, that they who have but little religious affection, have certainly but little religion. And they who condemn others for their religious affections, and have none themselves, have no religion.

There are false affections, and there are true. A man’s having much affection, does not prove that he has any true religion: but if he has no affection it proves that he has no true religion. The right way, is not to reject all affections, nor to approve all; but to distinguish between affections, approving some, and rejecting others; separating between the wheat and the chaff, the gold and the dross, the precious and the vile.

Source: Religious affections, by Jonathan Edwards

Yale recently released three volumes of its 26-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards in paperback, volumes which in hardback retail north of $90. The volumes are available all over, but Westminster Theological Seminary Bookstore has the best price I have seen. The three volumes are:

Freedom of the Will (volume 1) for $17.80 This is Edwards’s masterpiece, a carefully argument tour-de-force against Arminianism. It is edited by Paul Ramsey. I found the last part of this book most helpful. (Part 4: Wherein the chief Grounds of the Reasonings of Arminians, in Support and defense of Their Notions of Liberty, Moral Agency, etc. and against the Opposite Doctrine, Considered.)

Religious Affections (volume 2) for $19.00 Edwards seeks to define how one can distinguish the genuine marks of the Spirit against those spurious ones. John White edited this volume. Careful and meditative reading of this work reaps great spiritual rewards for the believer. And it is very convicting.

The Great Awakening (volume 4) for $19.00 This volume collects all Edwards’s writings on the awakening, including Faithful Narrative, The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God, Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, a handful of relevant letters, and a preface Edwards wrote to a book by Joseph Bellamy. The editor’s preface by C. C. Goen is a very valuable resource. I believe Edwards’s Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (though it does not quite represent his mature views) is under-rated among his corpus.

This is the observation:

“Of the many that were then called, but few were chosen”; of the multitude that were roused and affected by [Jesus'] preaching, and at one time or other appeared mightily engaged, full of admiration of Christ, and elevated with joy, but few were true disciples, that stood the shock of the great trials that came afterwards, and endured to the end: many were like the stony ground, or thorny ground; and but few, comparatively, like the good ground: of the whole heap that was gathered, great part was chaff, that the wind afterwards drove away; and the heap of wheat that was left, was comparatively small; as appears abundantly, by the history of the New Testament.

This is the reason:

THERE is no question whatsoever, that is of greater importance to mankind, and that it more concerns every individual person to be well resolved in, than this, what are the distinguishing qualifications of those that are in favor with God, and entitled to his eternal rewards? Or, which comes to the same thing, What is the nature of true religion? and wherein do lie the distinguishing notes of that virtue and holiness, that is acceptable in the sight of God. But though it be of such importance, and though we have clear and abundant light in the Word of God to direct us in this matter, yet there is no one point, wherein professing Christians do more differ one from another. It would be endless to reckon up the variety of opinions in this point, that divide the Christian world; making manifest the truth of that of our Saviour, “Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leads to life, and few there be that find it.”

And this made me so sad:

It appears plainly to have been in the visible church of God, in times of great reviving of religion, from time to time, as it is with the fruit trees in the spring; there are a multitude of blossoms; all of which appear fair and beautiful, and there is a promising appearance of young fruits; but many of ‘em are but of short continuance, they soon fall off, and never come to maturity.

I just started a class on Jonathon Edwards’ book Religious Affections. I hope to be sharing insights and joys that come from this class with the folks who read this.

By the way, who are you?

Jonathan Edwards is considered by many to be the greatest theologian, pastor, and author that America has ever produced.  In his book Religious Affections, Edwards tackles the subject of true grace in the life of a believer.  He wrote this book because of the many “born-again experiences” that people had during the time of the Great Awakening.

On the first page, Edwards sets forth 1 Peter 1:8 as his thesis.  The verse says, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Edwards argues that affections (i.e. emotions) are highly important in Christianity.  True faith, in other words, will result in unspeakable joy in God, full of glory to God.

Edwards gives us twelve distinguishing signs of true grace in a person’s life.  I want to highlight a few of them.

One evidence of true grace in a person is that they love God because of his intrinsic excellency and not for any personal benefits they receive (#2).  “Now the divine excellency and glory of God and Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the works of God, and the ways of God,” Edwards writes, “is the primary reason why a true saint loves these things: and not any supposed interest that he has in them, or any conceived benefit that he has received from them, or shall receive from them” (p. 88).  True Christians love God because he is the greatest treasure in the universe — not because he gives them entrance to heaven, escape from hell, spiritual gifts, etc.

The one that perhaps gripped my heart the most was #6 on true evangelical humiliation (humility).  He describes true humility this way: “Evangelical humiliation is a sense that a Christian has of his own utter insufficiency, despicableness, and odiousness, with an answerable frame of heart” (p. 126).  However, true saints “do not see their own odiousness on account of sin,” but rather because of the “discovery of the beauty of Gods’ holiness and moral perfection.”   True grace in a person leads them to hate sin and repent of it, not merely because of consequences, but because the God they worship is glorious and holy.  Moreover, true saints think themselves as the least of all saints (p. 130).

The twelfth and final evidence of true grace that Edwards provides is fruit in Christian practice.  He gives a lengthy discourse on this, citing literally hundreds of verses showing that fruit is the sign of whether someone truly belongs to Christ or not.  “True grace is not an inactive thing;” he says, “there is nothing in heaven or earth of a more active nature; for it is life itself, and the most active kind of life, even spiritual and divine life” (p. 168).  Someone may say, “I’m a Christian,” all they want, but if there is no killing of sin or obeying the commandments of God or active allegiance to the Scriptures, their confession proves to be false.  Edwards says that true Christians may be guilty of some degree back-sliding and may give in to particular temptations and even commit great sins.  But a true Christian can never fall away so that they “grow weary of the religion and the service of God” (p. 164).

This might be the greatest book on discerning new birth in yourself and others and obtaining true assurance.  Christian assurance is a process and progress, not information in the mind.  True grace from God will always result in internal transformation and consequently externally as well.  The true saint will grow to be more like Christ, to love Christ, to have the mind of Christ, and to obey Christ.  This must be the case, Edwards argues, because “the light of professors would so shine before men, that others, seeing their good works, would glorify their Father which is in heaven” (p. 200).

This is a guest blog by Steve Cota, a City Group leader at Austin City Life.

When we think of the word “obsession”, we typically think of a lust or perhaps something along the lines of the movie “Fatal Attraction”.  The movie Obsessed tells the story of a woman obsessed with a co-worker, willing to go to great lengths to obtain him, regardless the consequences. Is this all there is to an obsession? Can our careers, sports and fitness also be obsessions?

What Determines an Obsession?

In the book Consolations of Theology, Andrew Cameron writes: “These [obsessions] are whole-body desires that wage war against our very selves.” They are not righteous obsessions. Cameron takes St. Augustine’s account of obsession and says, “We have proper longings for God the Father, for each other, and for all the goods of a good earth.  But these proper longings are distorted and disordered into improper longings, many of which we call “obsessions”. Notice his distinction between proper and improper longings. It’s as if the line between proper and improper is not determined by the object of longing but the strength of our longing.

Be Obsessed

Obsession or desires aren’t evil in themselves.  In fact, the Bible has accounts that share those obsessions or desires are good.  For example, in Proverbs 13 there are these confessions of the truth’s about desires that are of a godly nature:  “… but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life.” (vs.12)  “A desire fulfilled is sweet to the soul…” (vs.19). Cameron explains, “We also see several NT appearances of strong desires as a form of moral excellence.  Disciples, prophets, and angels long to see divine truth; apostles long to see Christ; or to see their people; or for their people to progress in faith; young men rightly long to care for God’s people.”

Crave Well

So the question is: “can we crave well?”  Can the object of our obsession be a “righteous craving?”  Cameron offers some thoughtful theological consolations for obsession:

• Rest in Christ: “We can rest safely in Christ, even in the grips of our obsessing weakness.  At our worst, our most inhuman … when we are least like him but most need him…,” he will die for us.  And thus bear our most damning unrighteous obsessions.
• Reorder Your Affections: “Christ opens the way for the Spirit to be poured in our aid.” “The Spirit reorders our affections to respond in joy to his divine and holy affection.”
• Fly to God in Prayer: “Then, under the gentle power of the Spirit,” flying to God in prayer to aim our obsessions toward these new joys.  This joy is to love the proper object, the “perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God and of one another in God.”

We don’t need to find and cultivate obsessions or desires within ourselves, for they already exist.  According to St. Augustine, it is finding the proper response to that reality about us. For us to aim toward these new loves, as opposed to our obsessional loves.“Augustine points us to the proper object of our love, so that the old treasures we obsessed about can fall away as boring, or find their proper place.” That proper place is well articulated by Augustine: “you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts, [may they] find no peace until they rest in you.”

Jonathan Edwards' Religious Affections

While arguing that the effects on the body are not in themselves evidence of true conversion, Edwards is careful not to dismiss such effects automatically as being wrong, in and of themselves.

Whether Edwards desired it or not, he found himself pastoring people who claimed to be having wonderful encounters with God. Sometimes they cried, sometimes they remained silent and sometimes they seemed to lose all physical strength.

This was inevitably a concern both to him and to those who heard what was happening. And so, in seeking to discern the way God was working, Edwards finds himself defending the work of the Spirit while urging restraint on those affected by their experience of God’s glory.

As this is a common feature of times of revival we would do well to allow Edwards’ insights and comments to help shape our own opinion.

And in so doing, perhaps our minds and hearts might be prepared for fresh encounters with the ‘the glorious splendour of His majesty’ (Psalm 145:5)!

God’s Glory can ‘overbear’ the body!
In his ‘Treatise Concerning Religious Affections’, Edwards is keen to discern authentic spiritual encounters, and the fruit that follows such encounters. But he very definitely defends the role of emotion, or ‘affections’ as a key element in Christian spirituality. Sometimes these religious affections can overpower us physically.

‘And who that considers what man’s nature is, and what the nature of the affections are, can reasonably doubt but that such unutterable and glorious joys, may be too great and mighty for weak dust and ashes, so as to be considerably overbearing to it?

It is evident by the Scripture, that true divine discoveries, or ideas of God’s glory, when given in a great degree, have a tendency, by affecting the mind, to overbear the body.’ (A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, 1746, Section 2, Yale, http://edwards.yale.edu/)

Good Jonathan Edwards spends so much time considering these ‘power encounters’ that we will spend a few more posts listening both to his eye-witness accounts and to his judicious conclusions.

You can purchase Edwards on Revival here
You can read a review of Edwards on Revival here

© 2009 Lex Loizides

Yesterday, I listened to a Matt Chandler sermon and to start it off he said, “If I can be honest, when I became a Christian at 18, I thought at age 34 I’d be holier than I am now.”   Too bad the audio was corrupt and I only heard 14 minutes of the sermon!  Nevertheless, when Chandler said that, I couldn’t help but cry out to God in my heart (I was at the gym, so no verbal processing) that I want to be holier than I am.

Later in the day, I was reading Religious Affections. Johnathon Edwards has a way to make the Christian heart examine itself more thoroughly and seriously than most things I’ve read, outside the Bible.  In section 6 he talks about true “evangelical humiliation,” that is, true humility.  He writes:

Humility, or true lowliness of mind, disposes persons to think others better than themselves: Phil 2:3, “In lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than themselves.”  Hence they are apt to think the lowest room belongs to them, and their inward disposition naturally leads them to obey that precept of our Savior, Luke 14:10…It is not natural to them to think it belongs them to teach, but to be taught; they are much more eager to hear, and to receive instruction from others, than to dictate to others: James 1:19, “Be ye swift to hear, slow to speak.”  And when they do speak, it is not natural to them to speak with a bold, masterly air; but humility disposes them rather to speak, trembling.  Hosea 13:1, “When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel; but when he offended in Baal, he died.”  They are not apt to assume authority, and to take upon them to be chief managers and masters; but rather to be subject to other: James 3:1-2, “Be not many masters.”  1 Peter 5:5, “All of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility.”  Ephesians 5:21, “Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.”

I find in myself a desire to do those things well, by the Spirit.  Yet, so often — too often — I come up miserably short.  I’m not humble, usually ever.  And I see that my biggest battle is to make myself my god.  That’s when I really need to cast myself upon the grace of God in the gospel and kill sin by the Spirit (Rom. 8:12-13; Col. 3:5).  Instead, I can tend to kill sin with the spirit moralism and simply replace my “one black devil to let in seven white ones that were worse than the first,” as Edwards says.

Christ needs to be my righteousness.  I need to believe that, and have faith that God loves me because of his Son, and he sees me as he sees Christ.  When this happens, I’m compelled and delighted to obey, and holiness becomes a joy, not a legalistic triumph.

I’m a fan, especially of finding new, soul-stirring stuff that points me to Jesus’ sufficient and all-worthy sacrifice. Take this one:

At first I am afraid but not because of fear
But the Holy of Holies is drawing me near
Your voice like thunder shakes the ground I’m on

So hide my face in the shadow of Your wings, oh Lord
Hide my sin from the beauty here before Your throne
Your throne

Hallelujah for the blood of the Lamb that was slain
Hallelujah for the blood of the Lamb that was slain
And so we enter in to see Your face
We enter in to see Your face, oh God

Well I’m falling to my knees. I feel the earth beneath
With the weight of my sin, and this crushing unbelief
Could You really love me with all that I’ve done, oh Lord

You spread Your hands
And made a refuge for the weak and blessed
The weary, bruised, and broken
Took our sin. Inside Your wounds we hide away
Inside Your wounds we hide

- Tenth Avenue North, Hallelujah on Over and Underneath

In my post Confessions of a Campus Pastor, I talked about evidences of true conversion and assurance.  My intention was not to criticize any method of evangelism, to say that there are never true conversions, or to say that there is never rejoicing in ministry. Methods can be good; there are many true conversions; and we are always sorrowful, yet rejoicing.  My intention was simply to work through thoughts on how ministers of the gospel (i.e. all true Christians) deal with people who do not truly desire Jesus, holiness, to kill sin, etc., but seem to profess faith nevertheless.

I felt that Jonathan Edwards’ counsel was very wise in practicing discernment with this — since he lived and preached during a time in our nation’s history that was filled with true and false conversions (the Great Awakening).

Edwards wrote Religious Affections as a response to those who were critical of the Great Awakening and the emotions that people were showing — whether true or false.  Not all were genuine.  But emotions weren’t the problem.  Emotionalism was.  The other extreme?  Intellectualism, that is, knowing a lot of facts about Jesus instead of truly loving him with your whole being.

In the book, Edwards argues that affections (emotions that serve as catalysts for true love for God, and hence spiritual disciplines) are essential to true religion, but they need to be tested.  That is essentially what I said when I wrote, “If someone doesn’t hate their sin, if they are not growing in experiencing God as the supreme Treasure of their life, one has to wonder if they ever truly met Jesus at all.”

Some things I didn’t mention that affect this whole issue (because the post would been too long), is first that we ministers do not follow up well after someone professes faith and the person therefore does not grow.  Second, and I think more common, is that we assume that people are always genuine and we treat them as such (some people are truly genuine!).  We start to feed them follow up material and theology, when in fact, they give no evidence for true transformation, only a knowledge of facts or a love for a genie Jesus who gives them good gifts.

The latter happens often in cultures where the prosperity gospel has really taken root (e.g. South Africa).  When this happens, we need to go back to the core of the gospel.  When this happens, we need to tell them that God gave himself, not just benefits.  When this happens, we have to be bold and ask the hard questions (“Do you love Jesus or just the benefits?”) and show them the hard truths in Scripture (“For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it,” Mark 8:35).

Finally, I was not saying that people get saved and then can’t hack it so they are lost.  That’s unbiblical, and I’ve addressed that elsewhere.  Neither is Edwards saying that.  The issue at hand for Evangelicalism all over the world, not just campus ministries, is not whether the seed that was preached fell on good soil and got uprooted.  It’s whether or not the seed fell on good soil at all.

Among all the other things we must be concerned with as ministers, perhaps one of the most urgent is the warning that the author of Hebrews gives us in his letter:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.  But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you maybe hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.  For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end (3:12-14).

Later on in the letter (6:4-6), the author even says that there are some people who “have been enlightened…tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the power of the age to come” yet are not saved.  That’s pretty scary.  The people he is writing to, however, have “things that belong to salvation” (v. 9).  Those things include loving the saints and being imitators of men and women who went before them (vv. 11-12).  It also includes taking care to not be hardened by sin (3:12-14) and regarding Jesus as supreme in all the universe (1:1-4).

I want to come alongside people to help them “make their calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10).  My heart is to lead those to Jesus who are not truly with him, but think they are.  That means continuing to preach the gospel to them and ask the hard questions.  And that means doing the same thing to myself as well (2 Cor. 13:5).

Campus ministry, at large, is vastly different than ministry in a church.  The demographic is narrowed.  The lifestyles are more uniform.  The conversations are generally more surface-level because college students don’t have that much experience in life.

So when a college student “accepts” Christ, it is usually a big deal.  People get super excited.  There’s praises and clapping and baking of muffins, as well as co-ministers who say things like, “That is so amazing!  God is so good!”  Most people react like this.

Except me.  I get skeptical.

Yup.  I’m that guy.

Before you burn me at the campus ministry heretics’ stake, give me some grace to be vulnerable here. First let me say that when someone becomes a Christian, there is no greater joy for me.  Seeing a spiritual baby born is truly a miracle and God deserves praise for it.  Last year, I had a friend from China that I got to know during the fall semester.   We were conversation partners so he could learn English.  We went out to dinner together.  I taught him about American football.

Then, one day, he said in broken English, “James, I hear you know a lot about Jesus story.”  So, I told him about Jesus.  He contemplated.  He battled to find truth.  He came with me to my parents’ home for Christmas.  He experienced the graces of Christian love, family, and fellowship.  A few weeks after the start of the second semester, he told me that Jesus saved him and now, by God’s grace, he was a Christian.  Our conversation meetings then turned into intentional discipleship times.

Now that’s awesome.

What I don’t think is awesome, and therefore do not get super excited about, is when a person reads a tract and the only way they understand the gospel is that Jesus died so they can have a great life.  They can get healed of disease.  They can get a good job.  They can have a better family.  They can get a free-pass from their sins. A lot of times, students will pray “the prayer,” and we truly think they are a real Christian.  Jesus gave us some wisdom about this.  He said that we need to wait a while to find out whether or not this seed that was planted landed in good soil (Matt 13:18-23).

The great American theologian and pastor Jonathan Edwards helps us flesh this out.  He says that it’s not easy to tell whether someone is a real, professing Christian or simply a pretender.  He says in Religious Affections, “The difference between doves and ravens, or doves and vultures, when they first come out of the egg, is not so evident; but as they grow to their perfection [maturity], it [the difference] is exceeding great and manifest.”

Whenever someone excitedly asks me, “So he accepted Christ?!  He’s a Christian?”, I always answer with, “Let’s find out in 6 months.”  Edwards counsel is wise.  Let’s wait to make judgments until they have gotten out of the egg, flown around a bit, grown into their own feathers, and tried to find their own food.

A tangent to this is talking to people on campuses who have no “assurance” of salvation.  Here in South Africa, we hear a lot about “making sure they get assurance if they are Christian.”  I have never understood how this practically works.  Isn’t assurance a life-long battle?  After all, Paul says we are in a marathon, not a sprint.  Fighting to make your calling and election sure doesn’t happen because you know information about God’s preservation of his people.  Assurance comes about through transformation.  A Christian might say, “Of course I’m assured of my salvation.  I accepted Christ.  I’m secure.”  Others who I might share some verses with (like John 10, Romans 8, or 1 John 5) might realize Jesus preserves his people.  But we need to remember that it was Jesus who said that not everyone who says to him, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Again, Edwards gives insight.  “It is not God’s design that men should obtain assurance in any other way than by mortifying corruption, and increasing in grace, and obtaining the lively exercises of it.”   What are the “lively exercises” of grace?  It is a joyful and willful delight to love and obey God, study his word, pray, love people, and hate sin.  If someone doesn’t hate their sin, if they are not growing in experiencing God as the supreme Treasure of their life, one has to wonder if they ever truly met Jesus at all.

I want people to meet Jesus.  I want people to have comfort that they will not be lost.  All true Christians should want this.  But let’s not assume people are prepared to meet their Maker when they may in fact not be.  Let’s not assume people are really believers, even if they have confessed it for 10 years, when in fact they don’t really love Jesus and don’t hate their sin.

I understand this might rub some people the wrong way. I know that others might think I’m being too skeptical. I understand that I might be taking away from people’s joy.

The truth is, I love my job, but these are realities that I deal with. People can say whatever they’d like, but this goes beyond campus ministry.  This is an Evangelical problem all over the world.  I want people to truly follow Jesus, and that means continuing to preach the gospel to them as they grow to really be satisfied with Christ alone-not his gifts or anything else. Whatever you think, know that I’m just a dude doing my best, by the Spirit, to follow Jesus and be faithful to his calling.  I want to make disciples of all nations, but I don’t want any person to be fooled and get to the next life only to find out they were deceived in this one.

trying to figure out this whole “ministry” thing with you,
james

Jonathan Edwards writes in his Religious Affections on why we should expect Satan to tempt us with the Bible:

He who was bold enough to lay hold on Christ himself, and carry him hither and thither, into the wilderness and into a high mountain and to a pinnacle of the temple, is not afraid to touch the Scripture and abuse that for his own purpose; as he showed at the same time that he was so bold with Christ, he then brought one Scripture and another, to deceive and tempt him.  And if Satan did presume, and was permitted to put Christ himself in mind of tests of Scripture to tempt him, what reason have we to determine that he dare not, or will not be permitted, to put wicked men in mind of texts of Scripture to tempt and deceive them?

…And the devil can abuse the Scripture, to deceive and destroy men, so may men’s own folly and corruptions as well: The sin which is in men acts like its father.  Men’s own hearts are deceitful like the devil, and use the same means to deceive.

How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers, But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night, and he shall be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season, its leaft also shall not wither, and in whatever he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff which the wind drives away. Therefore, the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous. For the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

In the past I have copied and pasted texts that I have placed on this site. Today, I typed this from memory, so if there are some mis-spellings, or punctuation errors, sorry.

I have spent quite abit of time studying, thinking about, meditating on this passage. I would like to share my thoughts with you. This will take some time, as there is so much to cover.  You think this is jsut a short, simple Psalm, yet there is so much in it.

It is regualrly divided into 2 sections. Verses 1-3 about the righteous man, Verses 4-6 about the wicked. But there is more. There are several comparisons.

Verses 1-2 compares the actions of the righteous, versus what the righteous does not do. Verse three compares the righteous to a firmly planted tree. Verse four compares the wicked to chaff.  This is just the beginning. There is so much more in this Psalm.

After some further study and thought on the subject of being a slave of Christ or sin, well, let me share. . .

Roman society needed slaves. Any respectable Roman had slaves. Why should he work when he could have someone else do it for him? The best thing to acheive, according to the Roman mind, was to be able to do nothing — because you have others to do it for you. You have your own lawyer ( a slave), your own doctor (a slave), etc. Yes, Luke, the doctor, author of two books in the New Testament (The Gospel according to Luke, and The Acts of the Apostles), probably was or had been a slave. How sad to be a Roman, and unable to own your own slave(s).

Also, most slaves’ names indicated who their owner was. When greeted in public, their identity and value was determined by who their owner was. Their importance was determined by who their master was.

So Paul, in addressing the Romans says “Paul, the slave of Jesus Christ…”.Peter says the same thing. So does James.  Why? They are identifying themselves with their master, Jesus Christ, their Lord, their Master.

“The days were all too short, for I was lost in wonder and joy, meditating upon Your far-reaching providence for the salvation of the human race. The tears flowed from me when I heard Your hymns and canticles, for the sweet singing of Your Church moved me deeply. The music surged in my ears, truth seeped into my heart, and my feelings of devotion overflowed, so that the tears streamed down. But they were tears of gladness.”

–Aurelius Augustine, Confessions, IX.vi.14. Trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin, 1961), 190.

“I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.”

–Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections, in Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 238.

In ruminating over the topic of the unsaved in the community of faith, a dialogue from the movie Country Remedy caught my ear.

“Evan, look around you, what do you see?”

“An empty parking lot… trees… stars…”

“The trees, do you see how they move?  The stars and the trees… how does that make you feel?”

“I don’t know…um…calm… I guess?”

“That’s it right there.  You think they ought to make you feel calm but you don’t actually feel it.”

It may be before, while the man was under legal convictions and much afraid of hell, he earnestly longed that he might obtain spiritual light in his understanding, and faith in Christ, and love to God:  but now, when these false affections are risen that deceive him, and make him confident that he is converted and his state good, there are no more earnest longings after light and grace; for his end is answered; he is confident that his sins are forgiven him, and that he shall go to heaven, and so he is satisfied.  (Jonathan Edwards, The Religous Affections, page 306) 

This past Sunday we considered how the gospel reconciles our past and present sin. One observation we made is that it is not mere actions that alienate us from God, but also our misguided affections. Scott Thomas, Director of Acts 29, posts some thoughts on what it means to be spiritually minded vs. carnally minded which also emphasize the central role of affections in the Christian life. He draws from the deep wells of John Owen for insight and offers us this gem:

One has to decide if one’s mind is fixed upon the spiritual or upon the things of this world. The Geneva Bible published in 1599 (the Bible of the Puritans) says, “For they that are after the flesh savor the things of the flesh: but they that are [savoring] after the things of the spirit, the things of the spirit.” Toward what do you savor: heavenward or earth-bound?

What we savor determines our savior. Our desire determines our deity.
It’s not our desire for things, but rather, the strength of our desire for them that produces hostility towards God. If God is not uppermost in our affections, then we become hostile towards him. Why? Because God threatens to unseat what we desire most. If you desire the approval of others more than you desire God, then approval is your God. If you desire control more than god, the control is your god. You are controlled by control. So it goes with success, beauty, goodness. When our hearts turn to other things, we turn our noses up at God. Bottom line, we do not desire God as he ought to be desired. Unlike the finite things of approval, control, success, God is infinitely desirable.

This is a stellar note by Louis Berkhof in his Assurance of Faith  (Grand Rapids: Smitter, 1928), 48-49.

“It was one of the great mistakes of the Pietism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that, in seeking the assurance of faith, or of salvation, it divorced itself too much from the word of God.  The basis of assurance was sought, not in the objective promises of the gospel, but in the subjective experience of believers.  The knowledge of the experiences that were made the touch-stone of faith, was not gathered from the word of God, but was obtained by an inductive study of the subjective states and affections of believers.  In many cases these were not even put to the test of Scripture, so that the true was not always distinguished from the counterfeit.  Moreover, there were unwarranted generalizations.  Individual experiences and experiences of a very dubious character were often made normative, were set forth as the necessary marks of true faith. 

The result was that they who were concerned about the welfare of their soul turned attention to themselves rather than to the word of God, and spent their life in morbid introspection.  It is no wonder that this method did not promote the assurance of faith that fills the heart with heavenly joy, but rather engendered doubt and uncertainty and caused the soul to grope about in a labyrinth of anxious questionings, without an Ariadne-thread to lead it out.  This method made seeking assurance by looking within rather than by looking without, to Jesus Christ as he is presented in Scripture, and made the experiences of others, especially those who are regarded as ‘oaks of righteousness’ normative.”

Berkhof then goes on to quote Archibald Alexander’s Thoughts on Religious Experience, which gave the account of a person who read all the classics on religious feelings but was hindered by such tediousness.  He then threw out all those books and read Scripture, and his demeanor changed at once.

This book is Berkhof at his finest.  It is a balanced account of what assurance of faith means – from a historical, biblical, confessional, and devotional perspective.

shane lems

sunnyside wa

There is an ethical need for a certain symmetry of affection for truth.  This symmetry would lead to greater gospel unity amongst God’s people (The Church) and a greater gospel witness to a lost world.  If Catholics and Protestants, Open Theists and Calvinists, Complimentarians and Egalitarians, Calvinists and Arminians, etc. could decide that their unity in the gospel was more important than their disagreements on everything else, and actually live this conviction out consistently … (!) … there would be a New Ecumenism at work that could change the face of Christendom.  

Let me explain … 

One way of describing the essence of true godliness is this: godliness is keeping your priorities straight.  This is because keeping one’s priorities straight would include keeping God as the priority of your heart’s affection, and such love would entail obedience to the entire law (Mt 22:36-40; Rom 13:8-10; 1 Jn 5:1-3).  It is also true, by that same token, that when something of lesser value than God takes the place of priority in our affections, this is the essence of sin (Jn 3:19; cf. Mt 22:36-40; 1 Jn 5:1-3). 

Have you ever asked the question, “Why should we love God more than anything else?”  One true answer would be, “Because He commands us to,” but this would miss the design of the question, for we are asking a more penetrating question about just why it is in the first place that we are commanded to love God above all things.  The answer cannot be in any particular act of God’s redeeming love toward us (e.g. because he redeemed us and has sent His own Son to die for our sins, has loved us, etc.), for if we seek to ground the necessity for God to be the priority of our affections in any one of His redeeming acts, we would have no grounds for why Adam should have loved God above all things before the fall.  The answer is quite simply that God sees love for Him as the greatest of all commandments because He is more worthy of our love than all things; He alone possess infinite worth. 

It would be sin to love so many things which are good in and of themselves, and worth loving, if at the same time our hearts grew cold to those things which were far more worth loving.  It should be no wonder to Christians that depression is such a wide-spread epidemic, coupled with shocking numbers of suicide.  There is no quicker way to make the soul unbearably sick than to feed it with everything worth two cents while starving it from enjoying the most worthy of all things.  The human race was created for something infinitely bigger than those things we settle for in our desperate scramble for satisfaction-namely, The Uncreated.  As the saying of Augustine goes, “…you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”  Thus, it is easy to see why God has commanded us to love Him above all things.  It is the most loving thing He could have commanded us.  In fact, all of God’s commandments have just this loving quality to them.  They are for our good.  God’s law speaks to us as divine council for our souls, pleading for us to know ultimate peace and exquisite happiness, and warning us of those things which expedite our own destruction.

Yet for those who have, by the great mercy of God, come to realize this great and ultimate truth, we should not think we have mastered this truth in our experience.  In addition to the human tendency to lapse in our affection for God by applying the strength of our hearts on lesser things, we often allow our affections for certain divine truths of God’s word to be destructively disproportionate to the level of affection such truths deserve.  For example, if those who are Calvinists allow their zeal for the doctrines of grace to exceed their measure of passion for the truth of the gospel such that they become bent more on Calvinism than the more basic message of the gospel, this would be a sin akin to idolatry.  Or, if some group of Southern Baptists, in despising a legalistic approach to abstinence, were willing to allow their zeal for Christian freedom to drink alcohol to divide the denominational unity and thereby ruin the pooling of resources which has been so effective in reaching so many people and nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ, this would be a great sin.  Freedom to drink alcohol cannot-by any sober biblical standard-be worth sacrificing such large scale Christian Unity, not just because of the unity itself, but for the sake of the prospering of the gospel message in the world which that unity affords. 

It is manifest, therefore, that a certain symmetry of affection with respect to various important truths is necessarily a part of getting a grip on the essence of real charity and godliness.

For too long Christians have been unnecessarily divided over secondary matters.  The history of the Protestant Reformation bears witness to schism after schism, resulting in a plethora of denominational zealots who devote themselves to defending and propagating the unique views of their denomination.  All this is done, of course, in good conscience of the individuals involved (we trust), and under a worthy banner: “the truth of God.”  Each denomination is fully convinced against another over some point of soteriology (e.g. Calvinism vs. Arminians, predestination and free will, God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility), church government (e.g. legitimacy of the presbytery, plural eldership vs. head pastor as virtual C.E.O., congregationalism vs. elder-authority), legitimacy or mode of certain church ordinances (e.g. infant baptism, foot-washing), etc.  Each person deems his or her teaching with regard to these issues as vital to the health of the body of Christ. 

The effect this has on all true Christians everywhere is a mixed bag, but some of the negative effects include the following: a distraction from the most important Christian beliefs, a confusion about what beliefs are essential and what beliefs are non-essential, a lack of one denomination’s trust and respect for another denomination, perpetual characterizations and uncharitable assessments and accusations of various sorts against those in opposition to one’s denominational or personal position, a lack of appreciation for whatever unity exists in spite of the differences, a lack of cooperation among Christians on important social and political problems, a diminishing of the demonstration of Christian unity, a weakening of Christian influence in an unbelieving world, and the near impossibility of a unified effort to reach and nurture the nations of the earth with the basic message of the gospel.        

On the other hand, if the truth about God is more cherished by Christians than it is despised by unbelievers, it is no more surprising that Christians find themselves in the midst of heated controversy over doctrinally related differences than it is to find Christians in controversy with unbelievers over differences of worldview beliefs.  Those who believe the original autographs to be inspired and inerrant would lack virtue if they did not consequently take great measures in securing their understanding of what the Scripture teaches for the sake of the edification of the body.  If ministers have the responsibility of teaching the people, and one minister’s teaching about the role of women in the church, church government, or the legitimacy of infant baptism differs from another minister’s teaching, it is easy to see how they would find it hard to “do church” together-even if each is willing to esteem the other highly as a virtuous Christian. 

This is part of the result of the fall.  Even as Christians, our remaining sin keeps us from discerning God’s truth perfectly.  Many Christians, while recognizing that institutional divisions (denominations) are a necessary evil on this side of eternity for the sake of conscience have also longed for all Christians everywhere to unite in some significant way.  Perhaps the most successful trans-denominational unity which has been achieved has been by those who have tried to form a strong alliance by rallying around the most basic belief in all Christian doctrine-the basic message of the gospel.  This group of Christians are known as evangelicals (from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “good news” or “gospel”).  While evangelicals cannot by any means be accused of considering all non-essential beliefs as unimportant, they have considered unity in the gospel as the most basic kind of Christian unity.  This evangelical unity was one of the greatest (if not the greatest) by-products of trans-denominational movement of Liberal Theology in the nineteenth century. 

Evangelicals, however, are all too often guilty of not being faithful to this original vision of gospel unity.  When Classical Liberal Theology that no longer believed in the deity and resurrection of Jesus was at stake, it helped us to see how relatively unimportant the secondary issues amongst true believers actually were compared to the need to fight for the basic gospel truth.  But nowadays we are overly zealous for non-essentials.  Particularly Protestant Christians should give more thought to having an evangelical unity and cooperation with anyone who believes in the gospel, even if they happen to be Catholic, Orthodox, Open Theist, Emergent, etc.  Those who work for a New Ecumenism don’t have to give up their secondary convictions, they just have to value the gospel more than those secondary convictions.  They don’t have to love their -ism’s any less so much as they must come to love and value the gospel even more.  

WTS Doesn't Have This???

Henry Scougal gets to the heart of nominal Christianity in his book The Life of God in the Soul of Man.  This book is foundational for the ministries of such godly men as George Whitefield and John Piper.

“Men are unwilling to quarrel with the religion of their country, and since all their neighbors are Christians, they are content to be so too; but they are seldom at the pains to consider the evidences of those truths, or to ponder the importance and tendency of them; and thence it is that they have so little influence on their affections and practices.  Those ’spiritless and paralytic thoughts,’ as one doth rightly term them, are not able to move the will, and direct the hand.  We must therefore endeavor to work up our minds to a serious belief and full persuasion of divine truths, unto a sense and feeling of spiritual things: out thoughts must dwell upon them, till we be both convinced of them and deeply affected with them.”

The nominal Christian “accepts” the doctrines of Christianity, but they make no difference in how they live because they do not love Jesus Christ and the doctrines of Christianity.  Their hearts are not moved to worship and obedience.