Practicing Sin: One of the things I appreciate about listening to sermons somewhat at random is that every so often a statement catches my attention and sends me back to a passage I have read many times before. That happened yesterday with I John 3, particularly the language of verse 6: “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.” This is one of those verses that has never seemed especially easy to me. I have heard many explanations of it over the years, some emphasizing the tense of the verb, others distinguishing between committing sin and living in the practice of sin. A recent sermon pressed that distinction pretty strongly, even to the point of making deliverance from the practice of sin an indispensable part of the gospel itself. 

I am not interested here in the preacher or the theological tradition from which he comes. I simply want to use his comments as a springboard for thinking again about what John is actually saying. I do not claim to have all the difficulties of this passage worked out, but I do think it is worth asking whether the common distinction between sin and the practice of sin really resolves the difficulty as neatly as we sometimes assume, whether John is giving us a test by which we measure the degree or pattern of our sinning, and what happens to the gospel when that distinction becomes part of the ground upon which we judge ourselves to be safe from condemnation.

After attempting to define the gospel, and stating that “repentant sinners who believe in Jesus are forgiven all their sins, and they will not come into condemnation, but will have everlasting life,” he begins drawing a distinction between those who commit sin and those who practice sin. He says:

“Please turn to I John 3. We are drawing some fine lines. These lines must be drawn. And there is a great fear that I have that in the resurgence of the gospel among Reformed people, these lines are being blurred. And in our enthusiasm to get people into Christ, we may be omitting a very real and indispensable part of the saving work of Jesus Christ for His people. Namely, that He really does save them from their sinning, not just from their sins in the past, not just from the filth, defilement, contamination, and guilt of their sins in the past. He saves them from their sinning from the day they believe until the day they die.”

After a few comments on the opening verses of I John 3, he comes to verse 6: “Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him.” I John 3:6. And this is really the passage I want to consider, using some of his comments simply as a springboard for thinking through what John is saying and whether the distinction between committing sin and practicing sin actually explains the language before us.

He continues: “Whoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen him nor known him. That is what he says. Whoever abides in Christ, whoever is united savingly to Jesus does not sin. The English Standard Version is a much better, more accurate rendering. The English Standard Version reads, listen, no one who abides in him keeps on sinning. No one who abides in him keeps on sinning. Go down to verse eight. He who sins is of the devil. For the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose, the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil. Again, the English Standard Version reads, whoever makes a practice of sinning, did you get that? Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil. For the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. You see what John is saying? All those who are practicing sin remain in spiritual bondage with Satan as their master. Those who are practicing sin are not in union with Christ. They are not under the Lordship of Christ. They’re under the headship of Satan. They’re held captive. They are still bound by his deceptive grip, which brings about habits of sin.”

After a few more thoughts, he finally concludes: “Beloved, none of us are safe from the judgment of God until we are saved from the practice of sin. Do you hear that? That’s part of the gospel, I’m afraid, is not being preached today. No one is safe from the judgment of God until they are delivered from the practice of sin.”

The difficulty begins almost immediately with the expression “the practice of sin.” It sounds clear enough until we attempt to define it. Christians sin. I do not think anyone seriously considering these verses would deny that. We sin knowingly and unknowingly, outwardly and inwardly, in what we do and in what we fail to do. We sin in our thoughts, our desires, our words, our judgments, our motives, and our actions. And if that is true, at what point does committing sin become practicing sin? How often may a believer return to the same sin before we say that it has become a practice? How long may the struggle continue? How much improvement must eventually appear? Somewhere a line has to be drawn, because according to this interpretation eternal judgment stands on one side of that line and salvation on the other.

That is what makes this more than a discussion about Christian conduct. If we are simply exhorting one another not to tolerate sin, there is nothing especially controversial about that. But once we say that no one is safe from the judgment of God until he has been delivered from the practice of sin, we have introduced another question into assurance itself. I am no longer looking simply to Christ and asking whether He has put away my sins. I must also look at myself and determine whether the remaining sin in my life has crossed an undefined boundary from committing sin into practicing it. And if my safety from condemnation depends in any sense upon identifying sufficient practical change in myself, then at some point I must decide that there is enough righteousness present in my life to distinguish me from the man who remains under judgment. 

In simpler terms, I am being asked to look at my life and decide whether enough change has taken place for me to regard myself as truly delivered from judgment. Whatever language we place around it, our attention has begun to move from the righteousness of Christ to the righteousness we can detect in ourselves.

And this is where the distinction begins to raise some serious questions. The believer is told that he will continue to sin, that he will never be perfect in this life, and that he must continually confess his sins; but he is also told that if sin becomes the “practice” of his life, he has never truly known Christ. Yet nobody seems able to tell us precisely where one ends and the other begins. If that distinction is going to determine whether a man is safe from the judgment of God, it seems reasonable to ask whether Scripture actually gives us such a line, and whether I John 3 is really intended to make us search for it.

This raises another question that seems impossible to avoid. What exactly is the good news being announced to the sinner? If Christ has borne the condemnation of His people, if their sins have been put away, and if there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, then the gospel directs us outward to something accomplished entirely apart from us. But if I am told that I am not actually safe from the judgment of God until I have been delivered from the practice of sin, then something more must be established before I can rest in that declaration.

That “something more” may be described as evidence, fruit, transformation, perseverance, or practical righteousness, but the effect upon the conscience is much the same. I must look within myself and decide whether Christ has changed me enough for His finished work to apply to me with certainty. The question is no longer simply whether Christ has satisfied the justice of God for sinners, but whether I can find sufficient evidence in myself that I belong among those sinners for whom He did so.

And I think that distinction matters. There is a tremendous difference between saying that the grace of God produces fruit in the lives of His people and saying that my freedom from condemnation must finally be verified by the fruit I can identify in myself. One may be an exhortation concerning the Christian life; the other begins to function as part of the basis upon which I determine whether I am free from condemnation.

That gives us one more searching question: If “sinneth not” in verse 6 simply means “does not make a practice of sinning,” what are we to do with the much stronger language of verse 9? “Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.” I John 3:9. Does “he cannot sin” really mean that he cannot make a practice of sinning? If so, why does John state it in such absolute terms? And are we actually explaining his language, or simply making it more manageable because the words themselves seem so difficult to reconcile with our experience?

The difficulty becomes even more apparent when we remember what John has already said earlier in the same epistle: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” I John 1:8. He then immediately speaks of confessing our sins and of God being faithful and just to forgive us. A few verses later he writes, “and if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” I John 2:1. John clearly knows that believers still sin. And yet this same apostle can say that whosoever abideth in Christ “sinneth not,” and that whosoever is born of God “cannot sin.”

Whatever John means, then, our interpretation has to take all of those statements seriously. I am not sure we help ourselves by immediately reducing the stronger statements to something like, “Christians still sin, but they do not practice sin.” That may turn out to be part of the explanation, but simply repeating the distinction does not really tell us what the distinction means, where the line is drawn, or why John can speak in language as absolute as “cannot sin.”

And perhaps that is where I am content to leave the question for now. I certainly do not pretend to have every difficulty in these verses worked out, but the more I think about it, the more hesitant I become to resolve them by creating an undefined category called “the practice of sin” and then placing the believer’s freedom from condemnation on one side of that category or the other. Especially when, after all of that, nobody seems to know exactly where that line is supposed to be drawn.

What I do know is that John himself does not leave us merely looking at ourselves. In the middle of this very passage he writes, “and ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin.” I John 3:5. Whatever else we may eventually conclude about verses 6 and 9, that seems like a very good place to keep our eyes. MPJ

Accountability: I was looking around for something to write about and, without anything particular in mind, began scanning through some recent messages on SermonAudio. One of them caught my attention simply because of the title: A Bride for the Son, from Genesis 24:1-21, with the subtitle Preparing to Meet God. I listened to several portions of the sermon, downloaded the transcript afterward, and although there are numerous things I could comment upon, one particular section near the end is really all I want to consider.

I never even checked what kind of church the preacher represented. After reading the transcript, I might simply describe it as a rather confused one and leave it there. What interests me is something far more specific. Throughout the message the preacher repeatedly describes himself as having a responsibility to prepare and protect Christ’s bride, to cultivate her beauty, and finally to present her to the Son. Then, while appealing to Hebrews 13:17, he says plainly, “I’m accountable for your soul.” A few moments later he asks, “How can I present a trashed-out bride before my Savior?” At that point I think we have moved well beyond a poor choice of words. We have begun to uncover a very serious misunderstanding of what a minister is responsible for, and perhaps more importantly, what Christ alone is responsible for.

I want to quote a larger portion of the message because the problem becomes clearer as he continues. The issue is not merely one isolated statement about pastoral accountability. There is an entire understanding of the church, the ministry, and ultimately salvation being expressed here:

“I’ll call this out because I often reflect on this passage and I want you to turn here. Don’t shortchange me. Check this out. Go to Hebrews 13. Same concept is communicated in Acts 20 verse 28. The leader in the church, the steward, the servant that has been granted overwatch over the bride, we have to give an account. See the fear in my eyes. I have to give an account for the bride of Christ. I’m accountable for your soul. Who’s adequate for this? Hebrews 13 verse 17, Obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account so that they will do this with joy and not with groaning. Why? Because this would be unprofitable for you. And I tip my hat, I do groan. I do. I would have you open your Bibles and do what it says for my own sake and yours. How can I present a trashed out bride before my Savior. It’s unprofitable for you and it’s misery for me. He is worthy. He is worthy…. I would have you be conformed to the image of Christ, bride, church, beautiful, willingly, with a good spirit, desiring it, so that He can present you with joy and not unsullied. Please. Well, in some sense, that trepidation and anxiety on my part is unwarranted because Christ will have a perfect bride, and not because of me, not because of you. He will have that perfect bride. He is going to bring that work about by virtue of His Spirit. It would be cool if we could do this willingly. Participate willingly. Desire it. Anticipate it.”

There is a great deal packed into those few sentences, and I find almost all of it troubling. The first problem is obvious enough: no preacher is accountable for my soul in the sense that my final standing before God somehow rests upon the faithfulness of his ministry. He may be accountable for what he teaches me, for whether he handles the Word faithfully, for whether he warns, feeds, and serves as he ought. But my soul does not belong to him, and my salvation is not his work. The moment a minister begins speaking as though he must somehow deliver a fit bride to Christ, the line between servant and Savior has already begun to disappear.

But I think the problem becomes even more serious toward the end of the quotation. We are told that Christ will indeed have a perfect bride, but that He is going to “bring that work about by virtue of His Spirit,” followed immediately by an appeal for the believer to “participate willingly.” At that point the perfection of Christ’s bride is no longer being located simply and entirely in what Christ has accomplished for her. It has become a process in which the Spirit is supposedly working to make the bride sufficiently beautiful while the believer is urged to cooperate in that preparation.

That is not a small mistake in terminology. That strikes at the heart of the Gospel. Christ does not receive a bride made acceptable through the combined efforts of the ministry, the Spirit, and the willing participation of the believer. He receives a bride whom He Himself has loved, redeemed, sanctified, cleansed, and perfected. Whatever exhortations may properly be given to believers concerning their conduct, those exhortations must never be allowed to become part of the ground upon which the bride is made fit for the Bridegroom. The moment they are, the finished work of Christ has ceased to be finished.

So let us look more carefully at the passage being appealed to: “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief, for that is unprofitable for you.” Hebrews 13:17.

There is nothing light about the seriousness of this passage. Someone who undertakes to teach, counsel, warn, and care for Christ’s people should do so with the knowledge that his own service will one day be brought into account. Those who minister among the flock watch, teach, warn, and care for the people of God, and they will give account before Him for the manner in which they have done so.

But notice what the verse does not say. It does not say that they will give account for the salvation of the souls entrusted to them. It says that they themselves “must give account.” The accountability belongs to the servant concerning his own stewardship; it does not transfer responsibility for another man’s standing before God into the hands of the minister.

That distinction seems almost embarrassingly simple, but it changes everything. A shepherd will answer for how he shepherded. A teacher will answer for how he taught. A watchman will answer for whether he faithfully sounded the warning entrusted to him. But none of those things makes him the keeper, savior, sanctifier, or final presenter of another man’s soul. The account he gives is an account of his service, not an account of whether Christ succeeded in saving those for whom He died.

The language “they watch for your souls” does not alter that. To watch for another is not to possess responsibility for the final outcome of that person’s salvation. A minister watches because the people among whom he serves are precious to God. He watches precisely because they are not his own. They belong to Another. And the solemnity of his position consists not in the thought: “Their souls have been placed in my hands,” but rather: “I am serving among people whose souls belong to Christ, and I will answer to Christ for how I treated them.”

That seems to me a much healthier way of understanding the fear involved in ministry. The fear is not: “How will I ever get these people into heaven?” Nor is it: “How can I possibly prepare a bride beautiful enough for Christ?” The fear is that a servant might mishandle what belongs to his Master – teach falsely, dominate consciences, neglect the weak, burden the sheep, or draw attention to himself rather than to Christ. That is surely enough to make anyone tremble, without imagining that the eternal destiny of Christ’s people rests upon his shoulders.

And the surrounding chapter reinforces this. Earlier we read: “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” Hebrews 13:7. Their ministry is connected with the Word they have spoken. They are servants of the Word, and their faith is to be followed as they themselves look to Christ. Indeed, only a few verses later the writer immediately directs our attention away from changing men and back to the One who does not change: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Hebrews 13:8.

That seems especially important. Hebrews ends by fastening the believer’s confidence exclusively upon Christ. And when Hebrews speaks elsewhere of the ONE who truly bears responsibility for bringing His people safely to God, it does not point us toward any human intermediary at all: “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Hebrews 7:25.

There is the Keeper of the soul. There is the ONE upon whom salvation rests. There is the ONE whose continuing ministry guarantees the final salvation of His people. Christ’s bride is not being made acceptable to Him by the anxious labor of a preacher, nor by some cooperative process in which the believer helps complete what Christ supposedly began. She is His because He loved her, gave Himself for her, redeemed her, and will bring her safely home. The preacher watches for souls; Christ saves them to the uttermost. Those two statements ought never to be confused. MPJ

An Ordinary Day: Thankfulness is strange sometimes. We can be surrounded by mercies and hardly notice them. Children running through the house, conversations around the table, laughter coming from another room, people arriving and leaving, stories being told, grandchildren growing almost before your eyes. None of it seems extraordinary while it is happening. It is just another ordinary day in which everyone is simply there. And perhaps that is one of the saddest things about ordinary life is how quickly extraordinary mercies become ordinary expectations.

Our holiday weekend was filled with those things. And as I looked around at my own children, now grown and raising children of their own, I found myself thankful simply to still be part of their lives. It struck me again how easily we can receive some of the greatest gifts of our lives as though they were simply supposed to be there. Perhaps that is why these family moments affect me more now than they once did. When your children are young, you can so easily assume there will always be another meal, another holiday, another afternoon together. Only later do you begin to realize that every gathering is its own kind of mercy.

But there is another mercy I find myself longing for when I look at them – something deeper than another meal, another holiday, or another afternoon together. It is the prayer that, beyond everything I can see and everything I cannot, the Lord might yet be at work in ways hidden from me, bringing them again and again to that old promise I have loved for so many years: that those who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Something happened yesterday that brought some of these thoughts back to me in an entirely different way. We stopped for a little while at a large community playground, and while we were there, we met the sweetest little five-year-old girl. She had just turned five. She was a twin, and she had ridden her bicycle to the park with her mother and sisters. When she came over and removed her bicycle helmet, we realized that she had no hair.

Immediately, your heart sinks. Her two sisters went off to play, but this little girl wanted to talk. And talk she did. She came over and began telling us that she had just turned five, showing us the stuffed animal she had received, and telling us one thing after another with the kind of excitement only a five-year-old can have. And all the while I found myself thinking, Oh Lord, please be merciful to this little girl. Please bring her back to health.

There has always been something about suffering in little children that I have found especially difficult. Perhaps part of it is because our own family has been spared so much. Six children, grandchildren everywhere now, and comparatively little serious illness. And when you suddenly find yourself standing beside a five-year-old child going through chemotherapy, it does something to you. It makes you think about how casually we receive so many mercies. How much time we spend irritated over things that do not matter. How easily our lives become centered around ourselves. How often we complain about an ordinary day without realizing what an extraordinary mercy such a day can be.

Eventually her mother came over, and I asked the question that had been sitting in my mind. “Is she going to be okay?” She began telling us what had happened. What started with a doctor’s visit eventually led to the discovery of tumors. Her daughter has been receiving chemotherapy for quite some time, and there are still uncertainties about what lies ahead. And yet there was such kindness in the way her mother spoke. No bitterness. No complaints. Just a mother patiently telling us what her little girl had been through while that same little girl stood nearby, delighted that she was five years old and holding tightly to her stuffed animal.

I have thought about her several times since we left. And I have thought about thankfulness. Not the kind we manufacture because we know we are supposed to be thankful, but the kind that comes when something suddenly opens our eyes to mercies that have been sitting in front of us all along. Another birthday. A healthy child running across a playground. A family gathered around a table. A conversation with someone we love. Another morning. Another ordinary day.

Of course, I know that “an ordinary day” does not look the same for everyone. Some who read this have known far more suffering than our family has – long illnesses, hospital rooms, children who were never well, loved ones who did not recover, grief that became part of the landscape of life. I do not want to romanticize suffering or suggest that thankfulness somehow removes its weight. But perhaps those who have walked through those places understand, in ways the rest of us may never fully understand, just how precious an ordinary day can be. Perhaps that is when the smallest things begin to feel anything but small. Sometimes one uneventful afternoon, one good report, one meal together, or simply having the people you love in the room can become almost unbearably precious.

And perhaps that is also where we are reminded of our limits. There are things no gratitude can explain away and no amount of love can fix. There are moments when the enormous questions of life become very small and very personal. You cannot explain everything. You cannot fix everything. You cannot make promises about what tomorrow will bring. Sometimes you can only ask God for mercy. And perhaps that is not such a small thing after all.

So today I find myself praying for a little five-year-old girl whose name I’ve already forgotten, and praying for six grown children whose lives now extend far beyond what I can see or know. And I find myself thankful – deeply thankful – for another ordinary day in which so many of the people I love were simply here. LORD, please be merciful to us all. MPJ

Ordinary Kindness: As my wife and I were preparing for a family gathering over the Labor Day weekend, it was a painful reminder to me that some of my own fundamentalism over the years didn’t just stay with me. Inevitably, some of it trickled down into my children too, and lately I’ve been thinking more seriously about what I taught them, not merely with words, but by the way I responded to people. Whether I intended it or not, they learned something about Christianity from the way I reacted to people whose beliefs, relationships, or way of life I regarded as wrong.

One of my daughters and her husband from Colorado were in town for the weekend, and relatives of my son-in-law were also gathering in town to have a family portrait taken. A few members of his family, including a nephew and niece, are gay and identify as transgender, and the instinctive response from a couple members of my family was basically: “We don’t want to be around them,” or, “We don’t want them coming over here.”

And I found myself thinking: Why not? Are we no longer permitted to care about them? Can we not speak to them, eat with them, laugh with them, and simply treat them like ordinary human beings, showing them the same everyday kindness we would show anyone else? Must every encounter become an opportunity to demonstrate our disapproval? I’m certainly not saying that everything people believe about themselves is therefore true, or that we have to suddenly abandon every moral distinction. But I’m beginning to wonder whether we have made ordinary kindness toward people sound like agreement with everything they believe or do, and whether showing them mercy somehow feels to us like compromising the truth.

Don’t you think people know when believers look down on them? They can usually tell when they are being treated as a morally inferior class. We may never say the words directly, but they can sense when we see ourselves as cleaner, wiser, safer, or more respectable. We may call that “being separate from the world,” while what they actually experience is something very different: the feeling that we consider ourselves morally above them – that we are willing to speak about them, judge them, and keep our distance from them, but not simply meet them as fellow human beings in need of the same mercy we ourselves have received.

If I truly believe that I stand entirely by the mercy of God in Christ, then how can that produce in me a spirit that looks down upon another person? There are sins I do not understand. There are lives I would not choose. There are convictions I cannot affirm. But none of that prevents me from being kind. MPJ

PostScript 1. I think this is such an important reminder. Once we stop locating the difference in ourselves, it changes not only how we think about others, but how we treat them. Humility does not require us to pretend that every belief is equally true, or that we can worship indiscriminately with everyone. But it should make contempt very difficult. We can disagree, separate where conscience requires it, and still be genuinely friendly, patient, and kind. There is a real difference between standing for what we believe to be true and standing above the person who does not believe it.

PostScript 2. This really got me thinking. Can even our desire to be obedient become another way of reassuring ourselves about ourselves? We can take perfectly real biblical warnings and begin using them as proof that we are the careful ones, the discerning ones, the faithful ones. The outward action may be entirely defensible, while the heart turns it into another reason to feel superior. That is why your line about hating the Pharisees hit so hard. We can hate Phariseeism in everyone else while still being very much in love with the Pharisee in ourselves. We can even become proud of how clearly we see religious pride in others. That really does boggle the mind. And I think “See, Lord, I hate what you hate!” exposes the same thing. Even hatred of error can become something we present as evidence of our own faithfulness. At some point there is nowhere left to stand in ourselves – not in our obedience, our discernment, our separation, or even our doctrinal correctness. “To whom can we go?” really is the right question. Only Christ.

The Ordinary Christian Life: Why does Christianity so often seem determined to produce extraordinary Christians? What brought this to mind was a recent promotion for a book about the Puritans. It was introduced this way: “The Puritans knew following Christ could cost them their lives. While we skim, scroll, and rush, they meditated, prayed, and examined their hearts. In persecution, defeat, and disaster, they clung to Christ. The Puritans were united in this: they strove to follow God fully. Despite their shortcomings, they were people of faith, and that set them apart in their day and in ours. Open these pages and let their example inspire you to follow God as they did. Fully.”

That final expression caught my attention: follow God fully. What does it mean to follow God fully? How committed is committed enough? How surrendered, how devoted, how consecrated must we become before we qualify as serious Christians? At what point have we forsaken enough to rise above the ordinary believer? The danger is that once we begin thinking this way, the Christian life starts to feel like a ladder of spiritual attainment, with ordinary believers always standing somewhere below the truly serious ones. There always seems to be another level to reach, another sacrifice to make, another measure of devotion by which we can distinguish the serious Christian from the ordinary one. But perhaps there is nothing wrong with being an ordinary Christian.

For most of us, the Christian life is going to look far more ordinary than extraordinary. We are simply going to spend our lives getting out of bed, going to work, loving our spouses, raising children, caring for parents, paying bills, enduring disappointments, helping people when we can, failing far more often than we would like, praying imperfectly, reading Scripture imperfectly, and looking again and again to Christ. For most believers, that is not a lesser version of Christianity. That is simply where faith is lived. So why does ordinary faithfulness sometimes seem almost embarrassing?

It is as though believing Christ, loving your family, loving your neighbor, and receiving the mercies of God with thanksgiving were somehow no longer enough. We began needing words like radical, surrendered, sacrificial, devoted, &c. Christianity had to be impressive. The believer had to be impressive. And without quite noticing it, the extraordinary Christian began to replace the extraordinary Christ as the thing we were being taught to admire.

The center of Christianity is not supposed to be the astonishing degree of our surrender and devotion. The center is Christ: His righteousness, His obedience, His cross, His resurrection, His sufficiency. But we seem almost incapable of leaving the glory there. We keep turning Christianity back into a story about what grace has made of us: how devoted we have become, how much we have sacrificed, how differently we now live from everybody else. Christ may still fill our vocabulary while, almost without noticing it, we ourselves become the ones we are admiring. And that shift has consequences.

Once the extraordinary Christian becomes the standard, ordinary faithfulness starts to look suspiciously inadequate. The man who gets up, goes to work, provides for his family, comes home tired, loves his wife, helps his children, prays as he is able, reads Scripture when he can, and rests his hope in Christ may begin to feel that he is somehow falling short of real discipleship. So may the woman whose days are filled with work, children, meals, errands, responsibilities, interruptions, conversations, care for others, and the thousand ordinary demands that rarely look spiritual enough to impress anyone. She may not have hours for meditation, long stretches of uninterrupted prayer, or a dramatic story of sacrifice. She too is simply living the life God has given her, looking to Christ in the midst of it. And somehow we have learned to make that sound like a spiritual deficiency.

The trouble is that these categories are almost impossible to define without turning the Christian life into a contest of spiritual intensity. One man prays twenty minutes, another prays two hours. One woman reads a chapter of Scripture before the children wake, another spends the morning studying theology. One Christian gives generously while living comfortably, another gives away almost everything. Which one is following God “fully”? Which one has sacrificed enough? Which one is devoted enough? Once we begin asking those questions, we have already drifted dangerously close to measuring Christianity by the Christian instead of by Christ. 

Maybe the answer is not to keep raising the standard of spiritual intensity, but to recover the ordinary Christian life as something good in and of itself – not as the consolation prize for believers who never became radical enough, but as the actual setting in which most of us will know the faithfulness of God.

It may be time to remind ourselves where most of the Christian life is actually lived: where God has placed us: in our homes, at our jobs, around our tables, among our families, through sickness, weariness, disappointment, laughter, work, rest, and all the ordinary circumstances that fill our days. We do not need to turn those things into something heroic before they matter. They matter because they are the life God has given us, and there is no shame in receiving that life from His hand with gratitude, living under His care, receiving His gifts with thanksgiving, and looking to Christ in the middle of it all.

What the Christian finally must forsake is not an ordinary life, but every hope of standing before God in a righteousness of his own. It is not comfort, possessions, leisure, family, work, or the ordinary mercies of life that must be surrendered. What must be abandoned is every claim that our devotion, sacrifice, obedience, or seriousness can commend us to God. Philippians 3:7-9. The great renunciation of the Christian life is not measured by how impressively we have followed Christ, but by whether we have abandoned every hope of standing before God in ourselves.

Perhaps Christianity does not need to make us extraordinary in order to be glorious. We are ordinary people living ordinary lives, often weak, often distracted, and often painfully aware of how little there is in us worth admiring. But Christ is not ordinary. His righteousness is perfect, His obedience complete, His mercy inexhaustible, His salvation sufficient. We may simply receive the life God has given us with thanksgiving and keep looking to Christ. Ordinary sinners have an extraordinary Savior, and that is more than enough. MPJ

Abiding in Christ: The expression “abiding in Christ” has become Christian vocabulary that everybody thinks they understand, even though very few people could define it without using other undefined devotional expressions. Ask someone: “What does abiding in Christ mean?” They may answer: “Living in constant fellowship with Christ.” “What does fellowship mean?” “A shared inward communion with Christ.” “What is an inward communion with Christ, and how is that inward communion lived out?” “By walking with Christ.” What does walking with Christ mean? “Living every moment in dependence upon Him.” What does living every moment in dependence upon Him mean? “Remaining in Christ.” And what does remaining in Christ mean? “Abiding in Him.” We’ve completed the circle and still haven’t defined anything.

Yet every expression in that little exchange sounds completely normal to our ears. More than normal, it sounds deeply spiritual. “Communion with Christ.” “Walking with Christ.” “Depending upon Christ.” “Remaining in Christ.” Who could possibly object to any of that? The language is so familiar that we may almost feel embarrassed to ask what any of it actually means. After all, these are the ABCs of the Christian life. Christians walk with Christ. Christians fellowship with Christ. Christians abide in Christ. Everybody knows that.

But perhaps that familiarity is part of the problem. We can repeat an expression for so long that eventually it begins to feel like a definition. One devotional phrase explains another, which is then explained by another, and because every expression sounds reverent and Christ-centered, we seldom notice that we may not have defined anything at all. Familiarity has taken the place of clarity.

And once these expressions become established Christian vocabulary, questioning them can almost sound irreverent. What do you mean you do not know what it means to “walk with Christ”? Surely a real Christian understands fellowship with Jesus. Isn’t this Christianity 101? Isn’t abiding in Christ one of the most elementary realities of the Christian life?

That is where undefined language can begin carrying a surprising amount of spiritual weight. “Abiding in Christ” may no longer simply describe a reality Scripture declares; it becomes an inward condition we are expected to recognize and maintain. Those who are said to be abiding are close to Christ, enjoying communion with God, and living moment by moment by faith in conscious dependence upon Him.

Those who are not abiding may be described as distant, cold, distracted, spiritually weak, or perhaps even backslidden. In its strongest forms, failure to recognize this experience in ourselves may even become a reason to question whether we truly know Christ at all.

That is quite a burden to place upon language we have not clearly defined. So before asking whether we are abiding enough, communing deeply enough, walking closely enough, or maintaining a sufficient sense of dependence upon Christ, perhaps we should ask a much simpler question: What does Scripture actually mean when it speaks of abiding in Christ? Not what we have learned to associate with the expression. Not what generations of devotional literature have taught us to feel when we hear it. What does the language mean in its biblical context?

There is much more that could be said about this language, and I expect to return to some of these larger questions later. For now, I simply want to pause over the expression “Abide in me” in John 15 and ask what Christ means by it before attaching to those words an entire theology of Christian experience.

I do not ask that because affection for Christ, prayer, dependence upon Him, or communion with God are somehow unimportant. Quite the opposite. They are too important to be left resting upon vague inherited expressions. If Christ says, “Abide in me,” then surely we ought to examine what He means in context, and not merely rely upon the meaning Christian tradition has taught us to associate with the words. Because abiding in Christ may turn out to be far less mysterious than we have made it, and perhaps far more certain.

So before trying to explain “abiding in Christ,” perhaps we should first pay attention to the word itself. This language is not unique to John 15. John uses the same word repeatedly throughout his writings, often with the sense of abiding, remaining, or continuing. People abide in a house. Words abide in people. God’s seed abides. Love abides. Truth abides. Christ abides. Believers abide. The word itself is not mystical. At its most basic level, it speaks of remaining, continuing, dwelling, or staying.

That alone should make us cautious about loading the expression “abiding in Christ” with an elaborate inward spirituality. It may be that the idea is far more objective, doctrinal, and gospel-centered than the moment-by-moment spiritual condition we have often been taught to associate with it. And John gives us an important clue elsewhere: “If that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son, and in the Father.” I John 2:24.

Notice where John places the emphasis. “That which ye have heard from the beginning” is to remain in them. And if that truth remains in them, they shall “continue in the Son, and in the Father.” Here abiding begins to sound much less like maintaining a continual inward consciousness of Christ’s presence and much more like continuing in the truth concerning Christ that they had received from the beginning. That does not answer every question raised by John 15. But perhaps it gives us a better place to begin. MPJ

KJV Onlyism: Question: I have a question: what are your thoughts on the many translations of the Bible? I have always used the KJV myself. But I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that?

Reply: I have used the KJV for many years, brother, and continue to believe that in it we have the Word of God faithfully preserved for us in English. I know there are many arguments surrounding manuscripts, translations, and textual differences, and I have written about some of those things in the past, so I wasn’t especially interested in revisiting all of that again. For myself, I am settled and very comfortable reading, studying, and quoting from the KJV, and I have never felt any need to move away from it. Honestly, when someone starts reading from another version in a sermon it throws me off – it almost feels like a different language. At the same time, there are a lot of red flags for me with some forms of KJV Onlyism.

That is more or less where I intended to leave the matter. But after going back through some older things I had written and looking again at arguments I once found more persuasive, I realized that some of my own thoughts have changed over the years. Not my confidence in the King James Bible, but certainly the way I would now frame some of the thoughts surrounding it. So perhaps it is worth revisiting the subject after all: not simply to defend a translation, but to think again about the larger doctrine of Scripture. 

The real issue may not be King James Onlyism at all, but what we believe Scripture actually is. It has to do with how we value the Scriptures themselves, and what we believe God has actually given His people. Do we think of the Bible mainly as the surviving result of an ancient textual history, or as God speaking to His people in words He has preserved? Perhaps the deeper question beneath all of this is not simply: “Which English Bible is best?” but, “Has God preserved His word for His people?”

Our understanding of Scripture cannot finally leave us with only the assurance that God once gave an inspired Bible somewhere in the distant past. We need the Scriptures now – God’s testimony concerning His Son, His truth, His light, His word by which everything else is judged. And if Scripture belongs only to vanished original manuscripts, or if what God actually said can finally be known only after textual scholars reconstruct it for us, then the ordinary believer is left in a very strange position. Yet that is not the way Scripture itself speaks. Men possessed Scripture, read Scripture, searched Scripture, heard Scripture, and were commanded to believe it. That is much nearer the direction I want to explore.

I should probably add that I am not coming to this subject entirely unfamiliar with the usual arguments. Over the years I have read David Otis Fuller, Edward F. Hills, Dean Burgon, Ruckman, Riplinger, and others associated in one way or another with the defense of the King James Bible. I have certainly not read all of them exhaustively, but I have read substantial portions of many of their writings and have been familiar with these arguments for a long time.

So I am not especially interested here in conspiracy theories about modern translators, sweeping declarations that every Alexandrian manuscript is corrupt, the claim that an older manuscript must necessarily be worse because it differs from the Textus Receptus, or the opposite assumption that older necessarily means better. And I certainly do not want to suggest that everyone reading an ESV or NIV is therefore without the word of God. Those questions can perhaps be addressed at another time, but they are not the foundation upon which I want to build.

Instead, I want to begin with Scripture as something presently possessed by the people of God. What does the Bible itself mean when it speaks of “the scriptures”? How did Christ and the apostles regard the copies and translations they read and quoted? And what does preservation mean if it does not result in God’s people actually having His word in their hands? Those questions seem to me far more fundamental than settling every textual and translational question before we can speak confidently of possessing the word of God.

One place that seems especially important to begin is with Christ Himself. When He stood in the synagogue at Nazareth, “there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias.” He opened the book, read from it, and afterward declared, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Luke 4:17,21. Whatever physical copy was placed in His hands, it was certainly not Isaiah’s original manuscript. Yet there is no hesitation in the language of the passage. Christ does not treat what He read as a distant witness to something that had once been Scripture. He calls it Scripture. That alone should make us cautious about speaking as though inspiration belongs so exclusively to vanished originals that the copies actually possessed by God’s people can no longer properly be called the word of God.

Paul speaks in much the same way when writing to Timothy: “And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” II Timothy 3:15. Then immediately afterward he says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.” Whatever copies Timothy had known from childhood, Paul does not distance them from the category of Scripture. He simply calls them “the holy scriptures,” and then speaks of Scripture as given by inspiration of God. That connection seems important. The inspired character of Scripture is not presented as belonging only to documents no believer could actually possess, but to the Scriptures Timothy had known, heard, and been taught.

We see the same practical view of Scripture in the Bereans, who “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” Acts 17:11. Their confidence did not rest upon access to original manuscripts, nor upon their ability to reconstruct the textual history behind the copies before them. They had Scripture in their hands, and they were expected to use it as the final test of what they heard. That is worth noticing, because Scripture itself continually speaks as though God’s people genuinely possess His written word, not merely witnesses from which His word must first be recovered.

Taken together, these passages seem to establish something very simple but very important: Scripture is not spoken of merely as something that once existed in an original form and must now be reconstructed for us. It is something God’s people actually possessed, heard, read, searched, and believed. That does not mean every copyist was inspired, or that every copy was free from every possible scribal difference. But neither does Scripture itself force us into the conclusion that once the original manuscript disappeared, inspiration somehow disappeared with it. The words God gave remained His word as they were faithfully transmitted among His people. “But the word of the Lord endureth for ever.” I Peter 1:25.

That naturally raises the question of translation. If the words God gave remain His word when faithfully copied, do they cease to be His word when faithfully translated into another language? I do not see how they could. The translator is not inspired in the same sense as the prophet or apostle who first gave the words, and every translation necessarily involves human judgment. But the revelation itself does not become something less than divine revelation simply because it is expressed in English rather than Hebrew or Greek. If the meaning of God’s words is faithfully communicated, then what we are hearing is still the word of God.

The apostles themselves seem to confirm this in the way they quote the Old Testament. Writing in Greek, they repeatedly give Old Testament passages in Greek form, sometimes with wording that differs noticeably from the Hebrew text before us, yet they continue to introduce those quotations simply as Scripture, and even as the words of the Holy Ghost. Hebrews, for example, introduces its quotation of Psalm 95 with, “Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith,” Hebrews 3:7, while Paul can write, “For the scripture saith,” before quoting the words spoken to Pharaoh in Romans 9:17. That seems significant. Translation is not a new act of inspiration, but neither does translated Scripture become something less than Scripture simply because it has crossed from one language into another. Its authority and divine character do not disappear in translation. God’s word can be faithfully communicated in another language and still be received as His word.

Interestingly enough, the King James translators themselves seem to have understood the matter in much the same way. They certainly did not regard their particular English rendering as verbally perfect or incapable of revision. They openly acknowledged difficult readings, placed alternative renderings in the margins, consulted other translations, and recognized that different translations could sometimes help bring out the sense of Scripture. Yet in their preface, The Translators to the Reader, they still made the remarkable statement that even “the very meanest translation of the Bible in English” could properly be said to “containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.” In other words, they did not believe that a translation had to be absolutely perfect in every word before it could rightly be called Scripture. Nor did they imagine that translators themselves had to be inspired men. They were able to distinguish between the human limitations of translation and the divine character of the word being translated.

This distinction between inspiration and preservation is important. Inspiration belongs uniquely to the giving of Scripture: “holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” II Peter 1:21. Preservation is something different. It is God’s providential keeping of that word in the earth after it was given, through copies, transmission, and translation. The copyists and translators were not inspired men, and their work was not a second act of inspiration. Yet neither does that mean the inspired word ceased to exist once the original manuscripts disappeared. God inspired His word once, and He has preserved that same word for His people. “For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven.” Psalm 119:89.

This is where the familiar expression, “the Bible is inspired and infallible in the original manuscripts,” needs to be handled carefully. I understand what is usually intended by it: to distinguish the inspired text from errors that may arise through copying or translation. But if inspiration is spoken of in such a way that it belongs only to documents which no longer exist, then we are left with an awkward question: what exactly do we possess now? We should certainly acknowledge the human element in transmission and translation, but not in a way that pushes the inspired word of God entirely into the past. Preservation must mean more than that God once gave perfect words which His people no longer truly possess.

And this is where I think we have to be careful not to create, even unintentionally, a kind of textual priesthood. Greek and Hebrew scholarship has real value, textual criticism has a legitimate place, and there are questions that require careful study. But the ordinary believer should not be left with the impression that he cannot really know what God has said until a trained scholar examines the manuscripts, weighs the variants, and tells him which words probably belong there. God gave His word to His people, not merely to those trained in the original languages. Scholarship may help us understand difficult questions, but it should never become the necessary mediator between the Christian and the Scriptures in his hands.

For myself, none of this requires abandoning the King James Bible or becoming uncertain about what I have used and trusted for so many years. I continue to receive the KJV as the word of God, to read it, study it, quote it, and commend it without hesitation. Its language has become so familiar to me that in many ways it has simply become the language of Scripture in my mind. I love it, trust it, and have no desire to move away from it. But I do not need to claim that its translators were inspired, or that every other English translation is therefore corrupt, in order to say that. Nor do I need to deny that another translation may genuinely communicate the word of God, even where I believe the KJV is clearer, stronger, or more faithful. 

So in the end, this is about more than defending a particular English translation, important as that may be. It is about recovering a proper valuation of Scripture itself. God has spoken. He caused His word to be written. He has preserved that word for His people, and we are not left merely with fragments of something that once existed. We have the Scriptures. They are truth, light, life, and the testimony God has given concerning His Son. And that may be the most important thing to remember in all of these discussions. We can become so occupied with manuscripts, versions, and textual arguments that we lose sight of the One of whom the Scriptures testify. The final purpose of possessing the word of God is not that we might win arguments about the Bible, but that through that word we might hear God speaking and behold Christ. MPJ

Sealing of the Spirit: I recently came across an old booklet that I had heavily underlined about forty years ago. As I read through my markings, I realized I was looking at a theological map I once lived inside. The booklet contains a sermon preached in 1842 by John M’Kenzie, who served as joint editor of the Gospel Standard with J. C. Philpot from 1840 until his death in 1849. The sermon was originally titled The Sealing of the Spirit and was later circulated under the title Believing and Sealing. It became one of the writings for which he was particularly remembered.

M’Kenzie’s central concern is easy enough to recognize, and in one sense even to appreciate. He is trying to distinguish living, spiritual religion from mere doctrinal assent – to show that a man may know the language of grace, profess the right doctrines, reform his conduct, and still possess nothing more than what he repeatedly calls “natural faith” or “letter faith.” There is nothing objectionable in saying that knowing the doctrines of grace is not the same thing as knowing Christ, or that an outward profession cannot give life to the soul. The difficulty begins when the distinction between true and false faith is increasingly located in a particular pattern of inward experience. From that point on, the question changes from what has Christ accomplished to what has taken place within me? And the further M’Kenzie develops his argument, the more elaborate that inward test becomes.

In the first section, where he distinguishes what he calls a natural faith in God’s Word from a merely “letter” obedience to it, he is already using language that would have been very familiar to readers shaped by that experimental school of thought. “Letter faith” and “letter obedience” had become something of a catchphrase – almost a shorthand way of describing a religion that possessed the words of Scripture without, in their view, possessing its inward spiritual reality. From there he warns against tract societies, Arminian proselyting, and what he regards as the unscriptural use of general offers and invitations. He then describes these deceived professors of religion in striking terms, as people whom Satan himself has effectively furnished for the journey: “when Satan lights the lamp of profession in the heads of fools, he seems to equip them with every requisite for their supposed heavenly journey.”

Not to get sidetracked here, but that last thought is revealing. Once “letter faith” becomes the category for everything short of the required inward experience, even a serious profession of the truth can be explained away as something Satan has furnished. That leaves the reader with an obvious question: if doctrine, profession, obedience, and even apparent sincerity can all be counterfeit, what is left to distinguish the true believer except the particular inward experiences M’Kenzie is about to describe?

He then begins to define what, in his view, separates natural religion from spiritual religion: “They were not ‘the good ground’ of an honest heart, made so by divine teaching and the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit. They were fellows” – the same character – “to the stony-ground hearer, who ‘received the word with joy;’ yet, when tribulation, persecution, temptation, and affliction arose, ‘he withered away.’ He was lacking in three capital points: (1) His rocky heart had never been broken by the hammer of truth (Jer. 23:29), and ploughed up by the plough-share of law and justice. (2) His religion had no root in it. (3) He had no moisture, none of the heavenly bedewings, waterings, and gracious anointings of the blessed Spirit.”

For the moment, I only want to deal briefly with that third point. Some of this ground has already been covered elsewhere, and it also ties directly into several recent thoughts on sanctification and the work of the Spirit. The point worth noticing is the way M’Kenzie makes these “heavenly bedewings, waterings, and gracious anointings of the blessed Spirit” function as necessary inward evidence of spiritual life, so that without them a man’s religion is treated as merely external and defective.

What are these “bedewings” and “waterings” of the Spirit? Where does Scripture define them? By what authority do they become tests of spiritual life? This is where experimental language can become dangerous. What may begin as an attempt to describe the work of God can gradually become another standard by which we measure ourselves, until our attention is divided between Christ and the question of whether we have experienced an inward work of grace. Instead of asking simply what God has said concerning Christ, we begin asking whether the right thing has happened within us – and whether it happened in the right way.

None of this means that Christian experience is unreal or unimportant. A believer may know deep conviction, strong consolation, sudden joy, seasons of darkness, and very real inward impressions from the truth of God. But those experiences must never become primary. They may accompany faith, encourage faith, or deeply affect us, but once they become part of the foundation upon which we judge the reality of our spiritual life, the believer can be left endlessly examining the quality of his own experience. There is always one more inward mark to authenticate, one more feeling to interpret, one more question about whether what happened within us was really of God.

M’Kenzie gives a good example of how far this kind of inward examination can go as he traces the experience of one he regards as a graciously awakened sinner: “Thus convinced of the spirituality and necessity of true religion, and his having a feeling sense of his great want of it, and his inability to produce it, he sighs and groans under the weight and helplessness, is at times almost pressed out of measure, and is even sometimes suspicious of the genuineness of his sighs and groans, because he feels a degree of insincerity and self-pity mixed with them.”

Well, I can certainly identify with the second part of that narrative. But what does that actually establish? Does the intensity of that inward conflict tell me anything certain about my standing before God, or does it simply tell me something about myself? The fact that I question the genuineness of my own sighs and groans may show that I am introspective, troubled, or painfully aware of mixed motives. But once such things are treated as marks of spiritual reality, the soul is sent even deeper into itself for answers that can never finally be found there.

And the experiential system becomes even clearer later. M’Kenzie describes gracious conviction through a fairly extensive series of marks: sensible awareness of sin, bondage under the law, anxious inquiry, confession, prayer, turning from worldly vanities, changed conduct, and finally deliverance into gospel liberty through an inward application of Christ’s blood and obedience. None of those things, considered individually, needs to be denied. The issue is what happens when they become the map by which I determine the reality of spiritual life.

I had several other examples marked out, but I think this is enough. What struck me most in reading the booklet again was that I was not looking at somebody else’s theology. I was looking at my own. These were the very kinds of distinctions and inward tests that once made perfect sense to me, and I can still appreciate much of what M’Kenzie was trying to protect. He speaks often and beautifully of Christ. But Christ can remain central in our doctrine while experience becomes central in our assurance. That distinction now seems enormously important to me. And forty years later, that is the part of the map I can no longer follow. MPJ

Regeneration: Regeneration is one of those theological words everyone seems to understand until somebody asks exactly what it really means. Nearly everyone I have ever known has used it as a synonym for the new birth, and often for divine quickening as well. I know what is meant, so I have never felt any great need to correct anybody. Nevertheless, I realized recently that I probably have not personally used the word that way in fifteen years or more.

For a number of years I spent countless hours transcribing old Old School Baptist writings from microfilm copies of the Signs of the Times. One of those writers was J. F. Johnson. I would locate an article, decipher the old copy, transcribe it, proof it, and eventually put the writings into modern print. It was incredibly tedious work. I loved it. Some men fish.

Johnson wrote several things about regeneration that I had never really considered before, and Gilbert Beebe later helped bring some of those distinctions into even sharper focus. I did not suddenly decide that everyone else was wrong and that I had discovered the secret meaning of the word. But the argument made me stop and think. And once a distinction like that gets lodged in your mind, it becomes difficult to unsee.

So what follows is not an attempt to straighten out the theological world, and I doubt Bible dictionaries will be issuing revised editions because of anything I write here. These are simply some thoughts about a word that carries a great deal of theological weight, though Scripture itself uses it very little.

What first made me reconsider the usual definition is surprisingly simple: the word regeneration occurs only twice in the New Testament. The first is Matthew 19:28: “And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, That ye which have followed me, in the regeneration when the Son of man shall sit in the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Whatever precisely Christ means by “the regeneration” here, it is difficult to make the expression refer to the personal new birth of the disciples. He is speaking of something larger, connected with his reign and glory. That alone should make us cautious about treating regeneration as a technical synonym for the new birth. If one of the only two places where Scripture uses the word does not refer to an inward experience in the sinner, then perhaps we should be careful not to assume that meaning in the second.

The second occurrence of the word is Titus 3:5: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” This passage is often treated as though the meaning were already settled: regeneration is the inward act by which God gives spiritual life to the sinner. But perhaps we should let Paul’s wording speak a little more carefully for itself. Paul does not simply say “regeneration.” He speaks of “the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost.” That wording at least raises a question. If regeneration already means the inward renewing work of the Holy Ghost, why does Paul immediately add “renewing of the Holy Ghost”? The two expressions are certainly connected, but I am not sure the language requires us to treat them as identical.

This is especially important because Scripture already has very plain language for the personal communication of spiritual life. John speaks of being “born of the Spirit.” Paul speaks of those who were dead in sins being “quickened.” John repeatedly speaks of those who are “born of God.” So perhaps the question is not whether God gives life to the sinner – he certainly does – but whether regeneration is actually the biblical name for that particular work.

If regeneration is not necessarily the biblical name for the personal new birth, then perhaps we should ask whether Scripture connects the idea of being brought forth again with something larger. I Peter 1:3 is suggestive: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” What catches the attention is the way Peter joins our being “begotten again” to the resurrection of Christ. He does not describe an isolated inward experience, but points us first to Christ coming forth from the dead. That may begin to open a different way of thinking about regeneration – not first as something beginning in us, but as something grounded in what has already taken place in Christ. Paul speaks in much the same way when he says that God “hath quickened us together with Christ” and “hath raised us up together.” Ephesians 2:5-6. The life given to the believer is therefore not presented as something detached from Christ, but as life bound up with him.

That connection becomes even more interesting in Acts 13:32-33, where Paul speaks of the fulfillment of God’s promise and then quotes Psalm 2:7: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.” Paul places the language of begetting immediately within a passage that moves into Christ being raised from the dead. Resurrection, then, is at least presented alongside the language of a bringing forth from death into life. This becomes even more significant when Christ is called “the first begotten of the dead” in Revelation 1:5 and “the firstborn from the dead” in Colossians 1:18. The word “firstborn” naturally points beyond Christ considered alone. A firstborn stands at the head of others who follow. His resurrection, then, is not merely a personal triumph over death, but the beginning of a resurrection order in which his people are included. I Corinthians 15:20.

Perhaps this is the point at which regeneration begins to come into clearer focus. Christ is brought forth from the dead as the firstborn and firstfruits, and his people are spoken of as quickened and raised together with him. Regeneration, then, may be less about the first moment of life inside an individual sinner and more about the great passage of Christ and his people from death into resurrection life. In the end, the most important part of this distinction is not the word itself, but where it points us. If regeneration begins with something happening inside the sinner, our attention naturally turns inward. But if regeneration is rooted in Christ coming forth from the dead as the Head and firstborn of his people, then our attention is turned first to him. Colossians 3:1-4.

The new birth remains personal and necessary. The Spirit truly quickens those who were dead in sins. But the life he gives is not self-originating life. It is resurrection life in Christ. We are begotten again “by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,” quickened together with him, and raised up together in him. So perhaps regeneration is best understood as the bringing forth of Christ and his people from death into resurrection life, rather than as the first inward moment of spiritual life in the individual. The new birth spoken of to Nicodemus is still personal and necessary, but it is the communication of a life already found in Christ. Romans 6:4-5. MPJ

Repentance: Today’s featured sermon on SermonAudio was simply entitled “Repentance.” We have considered repentance before, and I certainly was not looking for another reason to write about it. But after listening to portions of this message and then carefully reading through the manuscript, I was honestly astonished by what was being presented as the gospel. The problem is not merely an expanded definition of repentance, but the entire system of salvation that gradually emerges from it.

The sermon is clothed in the language of Calvinism. Repentance is called a gift. Luther, Thomas Watson, John Murray, and other Reformed writers are enlisted along the way. But Reformed language cannot rescue a conditional gospel. From beginning to end, this sermon effectively denies grace by placing the sinner back under conditions he must sufficiently satisfy. Repentance is expanded far beyond a change of mind into an intellectual, emotional, and behavioral experience which the sinner must possess, prove, and continue in if he is to escape eternal destruction. Whatever grace may be affirmed in principle, it is effectively denied by the system being preached.

I want to look at several of the preacher’s own statements and simply follow them to their logical conclusion. Rather than merely labeling the message conditional, I want to let his own words make the case. The following illustration is somewhat lengthy, but it brings the underlying theology into remarkably clear view: “We believe in faith alone, sola fide, just like the reformers do. Well, let’s set the record straight. Mark 1:15, Jesus said, repent and believe the gospel. We believe in faith alone, but repentance is part of saving faith…the two are inseparable. They are both two sides of the same coin. Remember, I was sharing this with an elderly man in a nursing home that used to attend this church, and he still didn’t get it. So I said, we repent and we believe. And I did with my two hands. I said, with one hand, you repent. With one hand, you believe. And with those two hands, you grab the promises of God…. But he never did repent and believe. And he died lost.”

There it is in plain language: with one hand you repent, with the other you believe, and with both hands you grab the promises of God. What exactly has happened to grace here? The sinner is no longer being directed to the sure accomplishment of Christ. The promises of God are pictured as something suspended before him until he reaches out with the proper combination of repentance and faith and takes hold of them. You repent. You believe. You grab. The entire illustration places the decisive action in the hands of the sinner. This isn’t a small modification of the gospel. It’s a completely different gospel.

And then comes an even more disturbing statement: “But he never did repent and believe. And he died lost.” That statement should trouble us almost independently of the repentance controversy. How could the preacher possibly know that? He has moved beyond judging doctrine or even outward profession and pronounced upon the eternal state of a dead man, apparently because that man did not satisfy the preacher’s conception of repentance and faith.

Repentance is not one of two hands by which we seize salvation. When God calls a sinner unto Christ, repentance accompanies that gracious revelation as a God-wrought change of mind concerning God, ourselves, sin, righteousness, and especially Christ. It is not a contribution toward salvation. It is the consequence of grace.

The difficulty becomes even greater when the preacher moves from what repentance requires us to do to what repentance supposedly requires us to feel. Appealing to the Sermon on the Mount, he says: “The first of the nine Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, blessed are they that mourn. And he’s not just talking about grieving over someone that’s died. He’s talking about mourning for sin, grieving for it as if that has died….this is what God calls for in repentance, a deep emotional feeling. And we say, ‘Lord, I apologize from the bottom of my heart, and mean it.’”

That is an enormous assertion. Where does Scripture define repentance as “a deep emotional feeling”? And where, in Matthew 5:4, does Christ define that mourning as the emotional sorrow that supposedly constitutes repentance?

The text simply says: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” The rest is supplied by the speaker. Mourning over sin may certainly be experienced by the child of God, but that is very different from making a particular depth of emotional grief part of the definition of repentance itself. And once that move is made, another impossible condition has been introduced. How deep must this emotional feeling be? How much sorrow constitutes repentance? One person may weep uncontrollably over sin; another may have little outward emotion at all. One may be overwhelmed for days; another may acknowledge the same sin before God without anything resembling the ‘gut-wrenching feeling’ he later associates with repentance. Which one has truly repented? Scripture gives us no emotional measurement because Scripture never makes the intensity of our grief the standard by which salvation is determined.

This is where experimental religion can become a terrible snare to the conscience. Instead of directing the sinner away from himself unto Christ, it sends him searching through his own emotions for evidence that something sufficiently deep has happened within. Was I sorry enough? Did I mourn enough? Was my heart broken enough? Did I really mean it from the bottom of my heart? There is no end to that examination because there is no objective standard by which the required emotional depth can ever be measured. None of this means that sin is insignificant, that believers never grieve over it, or that tears and sorrow are somehow improper. The question is much narrower: has God made the depth of our emotional sorrow part of a saving condition by which we escape eternal destruction? The message effectively says yes. Scripture does not. Sin may grieve us deeply. It may bring tears. It may humble us to the dust. But the gospel does not leave us there. It turns our eyes again to Christ.

The sermon then appeals to Esau as a warning that a sinner may wait too long and discover that the opportunity to repent has been withdrawn. He says that Esau “knew he should have repented” and that, with tears, he was essentially saying, “I wish I could repent.” But that is not what Hebrews 12:17 says. The text reads: “For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.” The immediate subject is the blessing. Esau wanted the consequences reversed. Genesis makes that plain. He pleaded with Isaac for the blessing he had lost. His tears were connected with the forfeited blessing, not with some spiritually awakened desire to repent toward God which God then refused to grant.

That distinction matters, because the sermon turns Esau into something the passage does not describe: a sinner who desperately wants repentance but discovers that God has shut the door while he is still alive. From there the warning becomes psychological pressure. You may want to repent tomorrow and find that you no longer can. You may have missed the “golden opportunity.” The door may already have closed.

But notice the contradiction this creates within the message itself. Repentance is repeatedly described as a gift of God. The sinner is told that he cannot simply produce it whenever he chooses. Yet at the same time he is warned that God gives him a temporary opportunity in which he must repent before that opportunity disappears. So repentance is supposedly sovereignly granted by God, while the sinner’s eternal destiny still hangs upon whether he takes advantage of the window God has placed before him. The practical message becomes: God may give you an opportunity to fulfill the condition, but you had better not miss it.

Hebrews 12 gives us no such picture. Esau’s sorrow concerned what he had lost. He wanted the blessing back. The passage does not present us with a man begging God for spiritual repentance while God refuses to give it. To use Esau that way is not merely a bad application; it is a misreading of the passage that turns the text into a threat the text itself does not make.

At one point in the message, the Puritan Thomas Watson is brought in: “Faith and repentance are the two wings that we fly to heaven with.” Whatever Watson intended by the metaphor, in the framework of this sermon repentance and faith become the wings by which the sinner gets himself to heaven, rather than the fruits of grace that turn him away from himself unto Christ.

Perhaps the most serious misrepresentation of God in the entire message comes near the end, where he attempts to describe God’s relation to the unrepentant sinner. Earlier he says: “Every second that you are alive is God patiently waiting for you to repent. Your whole life. God is patient. But one day…the alarm will go off…. the time will be up.” Then, appealing to Romans 2:4, he says: “The goodness and the love of God is beckoning to you. Yes, he thunders and he warns you, but he also tenderly beckons to you, says, please repent, please come and repent.” Those are astonishing words to attribute directly to God.

There is certainly no “please repent, please come and repent” anywhere in the text. Those words are not exposition. They are supplied by the speaker and then attributed directly to God. I do not use the word lightly, but this comes perilously close to blasphemous representation. To put invented words into the mouth of God is serious enough; to make those words portray God as unable to do more than plead, beckon, and hope the sinner will respond is worse still. Romans 2:4 says that “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” To turn that into a picture of God pleading, beckoning, and waiting for the sinner to do what He Himself must graciously grant is not merely careless preaching. It fundamentally misrepresents both the text and the character of grace.

Strip away the quotations from Luther, Watson, and Murray, and the picture left standing is unmistakable: God has done His part and now waits upon the sinner to do his. He pleads. He beckons. He gives the opportunity. The sinner must seize it before the deadline passes. That is not a minor distortion of grace. It is a fundamentally different conception of salvation. Follow that system to its working conclusion and the problem becomes unavoidable: whatever may be affirmed about election or grace elsewhere, within the practical logic of this message the sinner’s response becomes the decisive hinge. Christ provides, God waits, grace invites, and man decides whether the whole thing becomes effective. The language retains the familiar vocabulary of grace, but the structure of salvation has been recentered upon man rather than Christ.

Perhaps the most revealing line in the entire sermon is its own summary: “Your eternal destiny hangs upon repentance.” And by the end of the message, repentance has become an enormous container into which nearly everything has been dumped: change of mind, sorrow, confession, turning from sin, evidence, perseverance, and continued self-examination. That is the central failure of the message. The problem is not that it speaks seriously about sin; the gospel never makes light of sin. The problem is that sorrow, confession, conduct, and fruit are all folded into repentance itself and then made part of the system upon which the sinner’s eternal destiny is said to turn. Repentance is real. Its fruits are real. But neither is our refuge. Christ alone is. MPJ