Geoffrey Thomas writes:

The group was singing earnestly, the drums were pounding, the guitarists were strumming away, and the audience was tapping their feet – but the Spirit was not there. They sang songs for an hour, building up to a great crescendo and sitting down to an aura of well-being – but the Spirit was not there. The preacher gave his message, told his stories, made them laugh, and made them cry – but the Spirit was not there. He began his appeal and worked them over – some needed to come to the front to be saved, others to rededicate their lives, others for inner healing, others to talk to counsellors about their problems. A crowd gathered. A man said to himself, “I want to be happy like these people,” and he went forward – but the Spirit was not there. After the service was over, the people talked to one another about their activities and plans, and nobody realised that again the Spirit was not in their midst.

Down the road in another church, the congregation sang the hymns of Watts and Toplady and metrical Psalms – but the Spirit was not there. The English Standard Version was read – but the Spirit was not there. The preacher prayed for the congregation and the community; he thanked God for the gospel – but the Spirit was not there. Afterwards the congregation quietly went home, as aware as the minister had been that things were not as they should be, nor as they could be in the church of the living God.

When the blessing of God is removed from a gospel church which is worshipping in the old ways, the results are immediate and pathetic. If the Spirit of God is not inhabiting the praise of the people and the proclamation of the preacher, there’s nothing left but bare walls. However, when the Spirit is driven out of a church which has hand-clapping, “loadsachoruses,” a band, racy sermons, laughter, and altar calls, it will be about a millennium or two before anyone notices that he has gone – because even when he’s not there, they act as if he were, the atmosphere feels “religious.”

One day the preacher fell before God and cried, “Lord, I can’t go on without your blessing. David said of you, ‘He restores my soul.’ My soul stands in need of restoring. I seem to do everything like a religious robot, without even thinking of you or invoking your aid” – and the Spirit began to move.

The preacher searched the Bible, asking, What are the marks of the Spirit’s presence? He learned that defiant sin in his own life or blatant sin tolerated in the congregation quenches the Spirit. If he misrepresented God and his way of salvation, or if he fellowshipped with the ungodly, he found that he would grieve God the Spirit. He discovered that if he boldly preached on sin and righteousness and judgement, the Spirit himself came in his preaching and testified of these sober realities. Most important of all, if he glorified the Lord Jesus Christ and spoke much of him as God the Son and the Saviour of all who trust in him, then that work which the Spirit most delightfully assisted and blessed was apparent.

The great lesson he learned, as if for the first time, was that the Spirit is given to those who pursue God. He sought painfully to change his ways, discipline his life, be more resolute in studying the Word of God, spending longer in the presence of his Saviour, avoiding those patterns of life that left him morose before the TV to the neglect of his family. He went out after people who had been long on the fringes of the church and talked to them about their need of Christ. He gave more time to preparing his sermons, thinking of the people he was preaching to and the God in whose presence he stood when he spoke his Word. He continually acknowledged his own need of the Spirit – “without you I can do nothing.”

One Sunday he stood before his congregation and prayed, “Lord, we fear going through this service hearing just the voice of men – our own singing of hymns, and the preacher’s speaking his own words. We dread the thought that we’ll leave this building in an hour and not have known the fellowship and secret sovereign testimony of your Holy Spirit to our hearts. We confess our sins to you. We cry out in our helplessness and in our need of you. Please come and have mercy upon us. We can only erect an altar. You must send the fire.”

Then the forgiving Spirit, long grieved, modestly returned and breathed on them all. “If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20).

Reprinted (slightly edited) from New Horizons, June 2001.

Alas, few churches heeded the exhortation Paul H. Alexander wrote a number of decades ago. If God graciously grants reformation and revival, will we see a revival of strong support of the Sunday evening service?

One of the small pleasures of my early childhood was playing with other children outside the church after Sunday evening worship. For a half hour or more, the adults seemed to forget their parental responsibilities and we ran wild and free in the soft summer air of a Kansas evening. While our parents pursued more mature interests, we captured lightning bugs, played tag, or chased girls with toads we had caught. It was one of the high points of the week. Life without Sunday evening worship would have been a drag!

Fewer and fewer children would think so today. Sunday evening worship is not a part of their lives because an increasing number of churches are not including it in their schedules. Sunday evening worship seems to be on the endangered species list, and there is a lot more at stake than a child’s game of tag. Sunday evening worship can meet important needs in the lives of God’s people.

True, Sunday evening worship is nowhere specifically prescribed by Scripture – but then, neither is Sunday morning worship. Both services are established at the discretion and on the authority of the elders of the church on the basis of such texts as Hebrews 10:25–26 and 13:17. The historic fact is that the practice of worshiping twice on Sunday is a firmly established tradition in evangelical and Reformed churches. What has changed that would warrant a departure from the wisdom of our godly forefathers, who established and maintained this practice for so many centuries?

Below are four reasons which, I hope, may persuade us to keep this tradition alive, or revive it, as the case may require.

1. The Importance of Frequent Public Preaching

The need for the frequent preaching and teaching of God’s Word is the primary reason for maintaining both morning and evening worship services. The apostle Paul urges Timothy: “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim. 4:2). In this concluding and climactic challenge of his apostolic ministry, Paul is following the example of Moses and all the prophets of the Old Testament, as well as that of our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles. These great servants of God were pre-eminently preachers and teachers of God’s Word. Preaching was the key tool they used to advance the kingdom, and they were at it incessantly.

Since the Reformation of the sixteenth century, Reformed churches have led the way in emphasizing the necessity for the frequent public preaching of God’s Word. John Calvin exemplified this principle in his own practice of preaching nearly every day of the week, as well as on Sunday. First in Britain and then in the American colonies, our Puritan forefathers followed Calvin’s example by preaching twice nearly every Sunday and often at a weeknight service called “the lecture.” This pattern has characterized Reformed churches (and other evangelicals as well) until very recent times.

The preaching of God’s Word, therefore, in both morning and evening worship services on the Lord’s Day, has been regarded as an important application of this “frequent preaching” principle, crucial to the life of the church. Granted, this principle might be fulfilled at other times than Sunday evening, but experience has shown this to be the time that best suits most Christians. This practice has been regarded as axiomatic for Bible-believing churches and went almost unchallenged for nearly four centuries.

Not so today! “Church growth” experts are advising us that the evening service (and frequent preaching in general) is excess baggage, inhibiting evangelism and getting in the way of “small group” ministries now deemed more important than preaching. We are being advised that “the culture has changed,” that evening worship no longer meets the “felt needs” of our contemporaries, and that we need a great variety of programs to meet the needs of every age and interest in our world. If we do not change with the culture, it seems, we will be consigned to the trash heap of irrelevance, or, what may be even worse, to smallness, a fate worse than death to the “church growth” mind.

We should be asking if this is really the time to reduce our own efforts at preaching, the means God has ordained and blessed for communicating his Word. Our times have been called “the information age” because of the rapid growth of data in every field of knowledge. The mass media are propagandizing us intensively with amoral as well as immoral messages that are quite obviously impacting our church people as well as the world. Add to this the vast bulk of distracting trivia that the media peddle as important, and we have a seriously confused populace. To reduce our preaching either in quality or in quantity at this point in history appears to be a concession to the worst side of modernity. It is a dangerous experiment. The tried and true method of frequent preaching is being cast to one side for the sake of an unproven methodology – right when there is the most crying need for the preaching of God’s Word.

Writing in 1971, Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones spoke clearly to this issue when he said, “The most urgent need in the Christian church today is true preaching; and as it is the greatest and most urgent need in the church, it is obviously the greatest need of the world also.” A bit later in the same book, he said, “What is it that always heralds the dawn of a Reformation or of a Revival? It is renewed preaching. Not only a new interest in preaching but a new kind of preaching. A revival of true preaching has always heralded these great movements in the history of the church” (Preaching and Preachers, 1971, pp. 9, 24–25). This is the kind of guidance we need today.

2. Greater Breadth in Our Preaching/Teaching Ministry

Sunday evening worship provides an appropriate opportunity for pastors to present a broader scope of teaching and preaching than is possible in the Sunday morning worship service. The Sunday morning worship service has long been regarded as the time for a quite formal sermonic style. Given the majesty and holiness of God, and the awesome significance of the gospel, this is most appropriate. God deserves a worship characterized by deep reverence and high dignity, and the gospel is the most weighty issue before mankind.

Without departing from due reverence, it is also appropriate to employ a somewhat more informal style in the preaching and teaching of God’s Word on such occasions as the evening service. Here the pastor may adopt a more conversational approach, such as our Saviour employed on occasion in teaching his disciples. An evening service may have somewhat the atmosphere of an adult Sunday school class, using a variety of teaching aids such as an overhead projector and even questions and answers from the congregation.

This also has roots in Puritan practice. Our colonial fathers often used the “lecture” method as their Sunday afternoon or evening style of preaching. This meant that they would address topics of timely and practical interest that might not seem appropriate to the Sunday morning worship.

Whether or not a more informal or more topical style is used on Sunday evening, the point should be obvious that we need a greater breadth of biblical and theological instruction than can be given within the confines of the Sunday morning sermon. Our Christian colleges and seminaries are reporting that an increasing percentage of young people applying for training lack the basic Bible knowledge that used to characterize applicants. Failure to maintain Sunday evening worship and preaching will only add to the growing ignorance of the Bible and our confessional standards prevalent among too many of our people. To feed God’s flock anything like an adequate diet of preaching and teaching, Sunday evening worship seems to be an absolute necessity. This is one of the things it takes to produce the kind of strong, well-rounded disciples needed to advance the kingdom.

3. Keeping the Lord’s Day Holy

Morning and evening worship on Sunday is a valuable means of preserving the biblical observance of the Lord’s Day. Like the morning and evening sacrifice which Israel offered to God, morning and evening worship marks the whole day as holy, setting brackets around it to remind us of its special purpose in God’s plan. While we may differ on the details of Sabbath observance, some being more strict, others more lenient, surely we all agree that God requires us to keep this day holy.

This is my shortest point, but not the least important. The fourth commandment is of equal importance with the other nine. To treat it with contempt or indifference is to treat the whole of God’s law and God himself with contempt and indifference (James 2:10). Those who may not accept the full teaching of the Westminster standards at this point, are, nevertheless, under a compelling biblical mandate to discover and practice what Scripture teaches on the keeping of the Lord’s Day. To decry every other kind of moral decay without recognizing Sabbath desecration as a great evil is to betray our whole cause.

We must keep the Lord’s Day holy. God requires it and we need it. We were created with a need for the Sabbath, and Jesus reminds us of this need in Mark 2:27. Against a culture that seems bent on despising the Lord’s Day and all else that is holy, we need all the help we can get to hold our ground. The history of both ancient Israel (Ezek. 20) and the modern church provides sufficient evidence to convince us that to lose the Sabbath will eventually mean to lose all biblical distinctive and to lose our faith itself. The practice of morning and evening worship is conducive to preserving the sacred meaning of the day and, thus, the sacredness of all of life.

The ordained elders of Christ’s church have been calling his people to worship twice on the Lord’s Day for many centuries. If we will continue to hear that call, he will continue to bless us. This point leads naturally into the next. The preaching of the Word and the keeping of the Sabbath are keys to Christian culture, a whole way of life that blossoms and spreads through the faithful use of these means.

4. Maintaining and Propagating Our Christian Culture

There is a quality of spiritual life that develops and thrives around the worship of God twice on the Lord’s Day. Something about being in church with God’s people twice every Sunday has a wonderfully positive effect, producing not only Christian individuals but a whole Christian culture, a community lifestyle distinguished by its caring, Christ-like quality, and a missionary zeal that reaches out to the whole world.

Such a church is modelled for us in Acts 2:42–47. Here is a beautiful example of a “normal” Christian church community. Frequent preaching and teaching of God’s Word is obviously the very heart of this early church, and it was wonderfully productive of that first Christian culture, setting the pattern for healthy, self-propagating church life from that day to this. Churches that develop along these lines can expect God’s blessing for generations to come.

Os Guiness sees the opposite in the modern “church growth” movement – the movement that, more than any other influence, has contributed to the abandonment of Sunday evening worship. Guiness warns that such churches may have “no grandchildren” because “the tools of modernity are successful in one generation but cannot be sustained to the third generation” (No God but God, 1992, p. 157). We should stay with the established pattern. It has proven itself.

Evangelical and Reformed churches of recent history have come in for their share of just criticism. We have been far from perfect. At the same time, we should be reminded that it is those churches, with their “twice every Sunday” pattern of preaching and teaching, that have produced the many positive benefits of the Reformed and evangelical movement. These “twice every Sunday” churches were all we had until about twenty years ago. This older model may not have grown as fast as the new streamlined “once on Sunday” types, but they produced nearly all of our present pastors and denominational leaders, just about every Christian college and seminary professor you or I ever met, and the entire modern missionary movement. This is no small achievement.

Experience also supports this point. Please forgive me for being just a little autobiographical at this point, but thirty-seven years in one pastorate has given me a somewhat unusual perspective. I have been able to watch people in my congregation grow up, get married, raise children, and finish careers – in short, live out large parts of their lives – during that lengthy tenure. My generalizations about my parishioners may seem too narrow a database to satisfy all the demands of contemporary scholarship, and I am sure that I am lacking in total objectivity. At the same time, I am confident of one conclusion: Those who regularly participate in morning and evening worship over a period of years are the most stable and productive Christians. They are, furthermore, the most joyful and effective.

Our present membership is three hundred. Over the years, more than a thousand have come and gone, largely because of the nature of employment in Huntsville. Among those who have come to church twice on Sunday, there is a remarkable record of family stability and spiritual productivity. Of course there have been exceptions, but from these families has flowed a constant stream of children who have grown to maturity honoring the Lord, marrying in Christ, and following the Lord in their vocations. This is what it’s all about.

Another interesting fact is that in all those years there have been only three divorces among those who have been regular in our morning and evening worship. I have been reluctant in the past to tell such a statistic in public for fear the Devil would attack more of our marriages just to embarrass us. Confident that we can trust the Lord to protect our people, I tell it now in order to give praise to the Lord and to the means of grace he has given us to make us strong in him. Participation in Sunday morning and evening worship is a proven means of helping God’s people to be “strong in the Lord and in his mighty power” (Eph. 6:10). It certainly is not the only thing we need, but it is an important source of strength and blessing to those who have used it.

Courage, Friends!

I have written this to encourage church members, officers, and pastors wondering about the present shift away from evening worship. I believe that we are seeing a major paradigm shift away from a tried, tested, and proven means of practicing our faith. Advocates for this change have not provided adequate reasons for us to follow them. Such changes in the past have proven disastrous. We have every reason to keep the course we have been following and to persuade those who might be wavering to return to this established pattern.

J.C. Ryle, a great evangelical leader of the last century, described a leader of the first Great Awakening in terms that should encourage us all in this direction. Ryle said, “The good old apostolical plan of incessant preaching, both publicly and from house to house, was nearly the only machine that he could use. He was forced to be pre-eminently a man of one thing, and a soldier with one weapon, a perpetual preacher of God’s word. Whether in the long run the minister of the last century did not do more good with his one weapon than many do in modern times [late nineteenth century] with an immense train of parochial machinery, is a question which admits of much doubt. My own private opinion is, that we have too much lost sight of the apostolical simplicity in our ministerial work. We want more men of ‘one thing’ and ‘one book,’ men who make everything secondary to preaching the Word. It is hard to have many irons in the fire at once, and keep them all hot. It is quite possible to make an idol of parochial machinery, and for the sake of it to slight the pulpit” (Christian Leaders of the 18th Century, pp. 269–70).

Let’s Keep Our Sunday Evening Worship!

We should reaffirm this practice and continue it. Last Sunday night, as I walked out of church, there were the children – out on the lawn catching lightning bugs, playing tag, and chasing girls with toads. I am praying it will still be that way until the Lord comes back. I am praying that all of you will join me in working to that end.

Mr. Alexander was a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Reprinted from New Horizons, February 1996.

Dr. Howard Griffith writes:

Martin Luther was an outsized personality, with great faith and some great flaws. Living with this great person has a good effect on you. Let me commend his little book, The Freedom of a Christian. When he challenged the practice of indulgences in 1517, and when he debated Johann Eck a year later, Luther’s concern was pastoral, what Robert Kolb calls the “consolation of sin ridden consciences.”¹ Luther was becoming convinced that Christ alone is the Saviour, he alone is the Lord of the Church and his authority is found in the Scripture alone. But between 1517 and 1520, the leadership of the Church was not buying it. What the Church heard was Luther undercutting the Pope’s authority and upsetting church order.

In July 1520 Pope Leo warned Luther of 41 doctrinal errors, and threatened him with excommunication. He had 60 days to recant. In November Luther published his statement of the Christian life, The Freedom of a Christian. He dedicated it to the Pope with an open letter, asking for peace. This is his statement of justification by faith alone.

The book has two theses, or propositions. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.” This is true in the inner man. “A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”² This is true in the outer man.

Perfect freedom is the definition of the believer’s relationship to God. That freedom is his in his soul, and nothing can overcome it. Why not? [Because] nothing external can either produce righteousness and freedom, or bring unrighteousness and servitude. Luther defines freedom as being in a right relation to God. The only thing that can make a person free is trusting in the Word of the gracious God. If he has this faith, nothing can hurt him. If he lacks it, nothing can help him.

What did Luther have in mind by external good works? He was thinking of two popular religious lifestyles, the practice of penance, required for all Christians, and rigorous monastic practice. Penance kept up your relationship with God; it had three parts: contrition, confession, and works of satisfaction. Luther complained that contrition for sin had become a human effort that prepared the heart for approaching God, a human merit. “If you do your very best, God will not deny his grace.”³ But this left the conscience in doubt. How could anyone be certain he had done his best? Confession of sins to priest had become the occasion for tyranny, rather than the pronouncement of free forgiveness for Christ’s sake. And making satisfaction through good deeds assigned by the priest in confession turned people’s faith toward human works, rather than to God’s free promise.⁴ There was no freedom there.

How then can righteousness be found? It is found in the message of the Word of God, received by faith.

Luther said faith has three powers. Its first power is in receiving the treasures of grace that God freely offers in Christ.

…the moment you begin to have faith, you learn that all things in you are altogether blameworthy, sinful and damnable. When you have learned this, you will know that you need Christ, who suffered and rose again for you, so that if you believe in him, you may, through faith become a new man, in so far as your sins are forgiven, and you are justified by the merits of another, namely of Christ alone.⁵

No human work can accomplish this, neither can an outward work, but only unbelief of heart, make one guilty of sin.

Luther answers an objection: then why does Scripture command so many ceremonies and laws if faith alone “justifies, frees and saves”?  Martin’s answer is to draw a line between the law and the gospel. The commandments show us what we ought to do, but give no power to fulfil. God intends them to teach us our inability to do good, and lead us to despair of it. But the second part of Scripture, the promises, are “holy, true, free, peaceful words, full of goodness.” Luther is saying that when we entrust ourselves to the promises of God, the power and grace of the Word of God are communicated to the soul. No good work can rely upon God. Thus there is no need for good works to justify, and the Christian is free from the law. Good works are not necessary for righteousness and salvation.

Faith’s second power is that it gives God his proper glory by trusting him as truthful, righteous and good. The highest honour we can pay anyone is to trust him. Conversely, if we do not trust him, we do him the greatest disservice. “Is not such a soul most obedient to God in all things by this faith? What greater wickedness, what greater contempt of God can there be, than not believing his promise? For what is this but to make God a liar?”⁶ If a person does not trust God’s promise, he sets up himself as an idol in his heart. Then his unbelieving doing of good works is actually sinning.

Till now he had thought of God as a harsh judge who rewards individuals according to their merits. He does not deny God’s wrath against sin. But now he says that God’s basic disposition toward his sinful creatures is love and mercy, his personal favour, based on nothing but his own desire to show compassion.⁷ “What a kind, fine God he is, nothing but sweetness and goodness, that he feeds us, preserves us, nourishes us.” He also has a new understanding of grace. He no longer defines grace as an internally located gift from God; it became instead his favour, his merciful disposition toward sinners.⁸

Faith’s third power is that it unites us to Christ as our bridegroom. Here Luther becomes lyrical.

…Christ and the soul become one flesh [Eph. 5:31-32]. And if they are one flesh, and if between them there is a true marriage… it follows that everything they have they hold in common, the good as well as the evil. Accordingly, the believing soul can boast of and glory in whatever Christ has as though it were its own, and whatever the soul has, Christ claims as his own. … Let us compare these, and we shall see inestimable benefits. Christ is full of grace, life and salvation. The soul is full of sins, death and damnation. Now let faith come between them, and sins, death and damnation will be Christ’s, while grace, life and salvation will be the soul’s… By the wedding ring of faith he shares in the sins, death and pains of hell, which are his bride’s…. Her sins cannot now destroy her… and she has that righteousness of Christ, her husband, … and [can] say, “If I have sinned, yet my Christ, in whom I believe, has not sinned, and all his is mine and mine is his…”⁹

Luther calls this the glorious exchange, the royal marriage. By faith, then, the person can ascribe all glory to God and have no other gods. By faith he can keep all the commandments.

Finally, Luther says that by faith this perfect freedom means that we are kings and priests to God. Because Christ is king, so we are kings, (in the inner man) lords over all things. Nothing can hurt us. All things are made subject to the believer, to further his salvation. Nothing can subject him to harm, even if God ordains that he suffers and dies. The Christian is also a priest, because he can come before God, to pray to him acceptably.

How then is the Christian different from the church’s priests, popes, bishops, and other “ecclesiastics”? There is no distinction, except that certain Christians are set apart to be public teachers and servants.¹⁰ But the church has turned these servants into lords.

The church should preach, not just facts about Christ, but what Christ is to be to us.

…that he might not only be Christ, but be Christ for you and me… faith is built up when we preach why Christ came, what he brought and bestowed, and what benefit it is to us to accept him.

What man is there whose heart, upon hearing these things, will not rejoice to its depth, and in receiving this comfort, will not grow tender, so that he will love Christ as he never could by means of laws or works?”¹¹

Faith is trust in God, not a virtue. It is the rejection of all possible virtue. Faith is not an inward good work that takes the place of outward good works. Rather, it looks to Christ. It knows Christ and rests in him and his righteousness for us.

“A Christian is a totally responsible servant of all, subject to all.” This defines the believer’s relationship to other people. We must continue to do good works, because we are still subject to sin, and we are bound to others.

Good works are valuable to the believer, but not as an alternative righteousness. If that “Leviathan” burdens them, they are actually not good at all. This notion destroys faith.¹² All teaching about good works must be grounded in faith.

Faith is active through love.

That is, it finds expression through works of freest service, cheerfully and lovingly done, with which a man wilfully serves another without hope of reward; and for himself, he is satisfied with the fullness and wealth of his faith.¹³

His sum of the joyful service of the Christian:

Although I am an unworthy and condemned man, my God has given me in Christ all the riches of righteousness and salvation without any merit on my part, out of pure, free mercy, so that from now on I need nothing except faith which believes that this is true. Why should I not therefore, freely, joyfully, with my whole heart, and with an eager will do all things which I know are pleasing and acceptable to such a Father who has overwhelmed me with his inestimable riches? I will therefore give myself as a Christ to my neighbour, since through faith I have an abundance of all good things in Christ.¹⁴

Luther concludes “By faith he is caught up beyond himself into God. By love he descends beneath himself into his neighbor.”¹⁵

Luther brings us back to the gospel. If we would follow Luther, our ministries must, above all things, seek to lead people to believe, to trust God’s Word. We are to set forth Christ for us. God is good and trustworthy and he freely offers us all things, in Christ. Therefore the trustworthiness of the Word, and the necessity of faith is everything. What we want to do for everyone is to help them to believe in Christ as he is offered in the Word.

Second, Luther is not antinomian. He is clear that faith works through love (Gal. 5:3). But why do we need the moral law? Because we are still sinners, subject to temptation and to continuing unbelief. However, even as it instructs us as believers, the law has a largely negative function. Luther does not make a sound theological place for God’s law as the believer’s delight. But it is just the gospel that overcomes the problem of law. “If I am outside of Christ, the law is my enemy, because God is my enemy. But once I am in Christ, the law is my friend, because God is my friend.”¹⁶ It is the deepest desire of my heart to obey God’s law, and to do this in faith. Faith works through love.

Last, Luther’s doctrine of sola fide in 1520 is closer to “union with Christ by faith alone,” than to “justification by faith alone.” His major metaphor is the union of the believer and the Bridegroom, the wonderful exchange between Christ and us. Luther clearly includes justification in this, an “alien righteousness,” Christ’s righteousness, by faith alone. But the more precise idea of his perfect, finished, and final righteousness, counted ours once for all, is not here yet, because Luther speaks about our righteousness growing over our lifetime.

Later biblical reflection would clarify this, and Luther would be clearer about it too. God in free grace, reckons the righteousness of Christ to us, when we simply entrust ourselves to him. It is not faith, considered in itself, that grounds God’s pronouncement. Christ’s sacrifice for us, alone, is the basis of our being forgiven, fully and perfectly and once for all. In 1520 the brownies were still a little chewy. It took some time for this fully biblical idea of justification to bake completely. However, having said this, I think Luther’s idea of the glorious exchange by union with Christ is sound and biblical. Union with Christ by faith alone truly is the “freedom of a Christian.” When we receive Christ by faith alone, we receive both his righteousness as a completed gift, and are thus accounted righteous by God, once for all. And it is also true that our hearts are cleansed, what we term “sanctification,” by this union. What Luther calls the good works of a good man, notice, a changed man, are the fruit of this union. John Calvin would later put it like this:

We do not contemplate him outside ourselves from afar, in order that his righteousness may be imputed to us, but because we put on Christ, and are engrafted into his body – in short, because he deigns to make us one with him. For this reason, we glory that we have fellowship of righteousness with him.¹⁷

I close with these beautiful words of Luther:

Who then, can appreciate what this royal marriage means? Who can understand the riches of the glory of this grace? Here this rich and divine bridegroom Christ marries this poor, wicked harlot, redeems her from all her evil, and adorns her with all his goodness. Her sins cannot now destroy her, since they are laid upon Christ and swallowed up by him…as the bride in the Song of Solomon says [2:16], “My beloved is mine, and I am his.”¹⁸

 

¹ Robert Kolb, Martin Luther, Confessor of the Faith (Oxford University Press, 2009), 72.

² J. Dillenberger, ed., Martin Luther, selections from his writings (New York: Anchor, 1962), 53.

³ See Heiko A. Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2000).

⁴ Kolb, 86.

⁵ Dillenberger, 55f.

⁶ Dillenberger, 59.

⁷ Kolb, 60.

⁸ Kolb, 34.

⁹ Dillenberger, 60f.

¹⁰ Dillenberger, 65.

¹¹ Dillenberger, 66.

¹² Dillenberger, 72.

¹³ Dillenberger, 74.

¹⁴ Dillenberger, 75f.

¹⁵ Dillenberger, 80.

¹⁶ Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.

¹⁷ Institutes 3.11.10.

¹⁸ Dillenberger, 80f.

This lecture was part of Reformed Theological Seminary’s “Luther’s (Re)Formative Years: Engaging the Reformation at 500” Conference. You can find the audio here.

Michael Reeves writes:

“It is not to be expected that we should love God supremely if we have not known him to be more desirable than all other things.” So wrote the great hymn writer Isaac Watts. And of course, he was quite right, for we always love what seems most attractive to us. Whether it be God, money, sex, or fame, we live for and love what captures our hearts.

But what kind of God could outstrip the attractions of all other things? Could any unitary, single-person god do so? Hardly, or at least not for long. Single-person gods must, by definition, have spent eternity in absolute solitude. Before creation, having no other persons with whom they could commune, they must have been entirely alone.

Love for others, then, cannot go very deep in them if they can go for eternity without it. And so, not being essentially loving, such gods are inevitably less than lovely. They may demand our worship, but they cannot win our hearts. They must be served with gritted teeth.

How wonderfully different it is with the triune God. In John 17:24, Jesus speaks of how the Father loved Him even before the creation of the world. That is the triune, living God: a Father, whose very being has eternally been about loving His Son, pouring out the Spirit of love and life on Him. Here is a God who is love, who is so full of life and blessing that for eternity He has been overflowing with it. As the Puritan preacher Richard Sibbes put it: “Such a goodness is in God as is in a fountain, or in the breast that loves to ease itself of milk.” Here in the triune God, in other words, is an infinitely satisfying God, one who is the very fountainhead of all goodness, truth, and beauty.

That means that with the triune God there is great good news. For here is no mean and grasping God, but a Lord of grace and mercy—one, in fact, who offers a salvation sweeter than any non-triune God could ever imagine.

Just imagine for a moment a single-person god. Having been alone for eternity, would it want fellowship with us? It seems most unlikely. Would it even know what fellowship was? Almost certainly not. Such a god might allow us to live under its rule and protection, but little more. Think of the uncertain hope of the Muslim or the Jehovah’s Witness: they may finally attain paradise, but even there they will have no real fellowship with their god. Their god would not want it.

But if God is a Father, whose very life has been about loving and delighting in His precious Son, then you begin to see a God who would have far more intimate and marvelous aims, aims to draw us into His life and joy, to embrace us with the very love He has for His dear Son.

Indeed, this God does not offer some kind of “he loves me, he loves me not” relationship whereby I have to try to keep myself in His favor by behaving impeccably. No, “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12)—and so with the security to enjoy His love forever.

The eternally beloved Son comes to us to share with us the very love that the Father has always lavished on Him. He comes to share with us and bring us into the life that is His, that we might be brought before the Most High, not just as forgiven sinners, but as dearly beloved children who share by the Spirit the Son’s own “Abba!” cry.

In other words, the God who is infinitely more beautiful than all the gods of human religion offers an infinitely more beautiful salvation. Here is a God who can win back wandering hearts by the mere opening of eyes to who He is, who can give the deepest hope and comfort to the stumbling saint.

The Trinity, then, is not some awkward add-on to God, the optional extra nobody should want. No, God is beautiful, desirable, and life-giving precisely because He is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Only here can be found the God who is love and who shares with us His very own life and joy. Only here can be found the God whom it is eternal life to know.

John Calvin once wrote that if we try to think about God without thinking about the Father, Son, and Spirit, then “only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God.” Quite so, and that means that if we content ourselves with speaking of God vaguely or abstractly, without the Father, Son, and Spirit, we will never know the life, beauty, and comfort of knowing the true God.

Here and here alone is the God for whom our hearts were made, the God who can win our hearts away from the desires that enslave us, the God who is endlessly, unsurpassably satisfying.

© Tabletalk magazine

Greg Koukl writes:

If there was one bit of wisdom, one rule of thumb, one single skill I could impart, one useful tip I could leave that would serve you well the rest of your life, what would it be? What is the single most important practical skill I’ve ever learned as a Christian?

Here it is: Never read a Bible verse. That’s right, never read a Bible verse. Instead, always read a paragraph at least.

My Radio Trick

When I’m on the radio, I use this simple rule to help me answer the majority of Bible questions I’m asked, even when I’m totally unfamiliar with the verse. It’s an amazingly effective technique you can use, too.

I read the paragraph, not just the verse. I take stock of the relevant material above and below. Since the context frames the verse and gives it specific meaning, I let it tell me what’s going on.

This works because of a basic rule of all communication: Meaning always flows from the top down, from the larger units to the smaller units, not the other way around. The key to the meaning of any verse comes from the paragraph, not just from the individual words.

The numbers in front of the sentences give the illusion the verses stand alone in their meaning. They were not in the originals, though. Numbers were added hundreds of years later. Chapter and verse breaks sometimes pop up in unfortunate places, separating relevant material that should be grouped together.

First, ignore the verse numbers and try to get the big picture. Then begin to narrow your focus. It’s not very hard or time consuming. It takes only a few moments and a little observation of the text.

Begin with the broad context of the book. What type of literature is it history, poetry, proverb? What is the passage about in general? What idea is being developed?

Stand back from the verse and look for breaks in the narrative that identify major units of thought. Ask, “What in this paragraph or group of paragraphs gives any clue to the meaning of the verse?”

There’s a reason this little exercise is so important. Words have different meanings in different contexts (that’s what makes puns work). When we consider a verse in isolation, one meaning may occur to us. But how do we know it’s the right one? Help won’t come from the dictionary. Dictionaries only complicate the issue, giving us more choices, not fewer. Help must come from somewhere else close by: the surrounding paragraph.

With the larger context now in view, you can narrow your focus and speculate on the meaning of the verse itself. Sum it up in your own words.

Finally and this is critical see if your paraphrase makes sense when inserted in the passage. Does it dovetail naturally with the bigger picture?

Here is an excellent example of how effective this paraphrase technique can be.

Jesus, the Uncreated Creator

In John 1:1 the writer states plainly that “the Word was God.” In verse three he provides backup support for this claim. John writes, “All things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.”

John says the same thing in two different ways for emphasis and clarity: Everything that ever came into being owes its existence to the Word, Who caused it all to happen. If the Word caused all created things to come into existence, then He must have existed before all created things came into existence. Therefore, the Word could not have been created. Jesus is the uncreated Creator, God.

Those who deny the deity of Christ offer this rebuttal, though. “Wait a minute, Greg. You didn’t read the verse carefully. You missed something in the text. Notice the phrase ‘apart from Him.’ The apostle excludes Jesus from the count. If you said, ‘Apart from Billy, the whole family is going to Disneyland’ you wouldn’t mean that Billy wasn’t part of the family, just that he wasn’t included in the count. Every member of the family is going to Disneyland with the exception of Billy. In the same way, every created thing was created by Jesus with the exception of Jesus Himself. Jehovah created Jesus first, then Jesus created everything else. Jesus is not God.”

Note that this rebuttal turns on the ability to replace “apart from Him” with the phrase “with the exception of Jesus.” Allegedly they’re synonymous. Okay, let’s try the replacement and see what happens. The verse then looks like this: “With the exception of Jesus, nothing came into being that has come into being.”

If your brow is furrowed trying to figure this out, I’m not surprised. The reconstructed phrase is nearly nonsense. Strictly speaking, it means that Jesus is the only created thing that exists. Read it again and see for yourself. Obviously, the phrase “apart from Jesus” can’t mean “with the exception of Jesus.” These phrases are not synonymous.

“Apart from Him” means something entirely different. It means “apart from His agency.” It’s the same as saying, “Apart from me you’ll never get to Disneyland. I’ve got the car.” Apart from Jesus’ agency nothing came into being that has come into being. Why? Because Jesus is the Creator. He is God. That makes perfect sense in the context.

Let me give you some other examples.

Having a “Peace” About It

Colossians 3:15 is a text that is constantly misunderstood by well-meaning Christians. Paul writes, “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts.” Some have accurately pointed out that the Greek word for “rule” means to act as arbiter or judge. They see this verse as a tool for knowing God’s will for our lives.

The conventional thinking goes something like this. When confronted with a decision, pray. If you feel a “peace” in your heart, go ahead. If you don’t feel peace, don’t proceed. This internal sense of peace acts like a judge helping you make decisions according to the will of God. A paraphrase might be: “And let feelings of peacefulness in your heart be the judge about God’s individual will for your life.” Is this what Paul means?

This is a classic example of how knowledge of the Greek can be dangerous if context is not taken into consideration. The word “peace” actually has two different meanings. It could mean a sense of inner harmony and emotional equanimity. Paul seems to have this definition in mind in Philippians 4:7: “And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” This is the subjective sense of peace.

The word also has an objective sense. It sometimes means lack of conflict between two parties formerly at war with each other. This definition of peace is what Paul intends in Romans 5:1: “Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Note the distinction between the peace of God and peace with God in these two verses.)

What sense of peace did Paul have in mind when writing to the Colossians? The Greek gives us no indication because the same word is used in all three cases. Once again, context is king. The specific meaning can only be known from the surrounding material.

In verse 11, Paul says that in the Body of Christ there are no divisions between Greek and Jew, slave and free, etc. He appeals for unity in the body characterized by forgiveness, humility, and gentleness. He then adds that harmony (“peace”) should be the rule that guides our relationships.

Paul has the objective sense of peace in mind here lack of conflict between Christians not a subjective feeling of peace in an individual Christian’s heart.

This becomes obvious when we join the suggested paraphrases with the context:

Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let feelings of peacefulness in your heart be the judge about God’s individual will for your life, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.

vs.

Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let harmony, not conflict, be the rule that guides you, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful.

The first is completely foreign to the context; the second fits right in with everything that comes before and after. In the context of Colossians 3, there is no hint of using internal feelings as a divine stamp of approval on our decisions. Personal decision-making is not the point of the paragraph. Harmony and unity in the Body is.

“If I Be Lifted Up”

John 12:32 is another case where a phrase can have two widely divergent meanings. It’s not uncommon for worship leaders to quote this statement of Jesus: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to Myself.”

We “lift up” the Lord when we exalt Him and declare His glory. If we focus on Jesus and ascribe glory to Him, the power of Christ is released to transform the hearts of those listening and they are drawn to Him. This is the meaning the worship leader has in mind, but it isn’t what Jesus is talking about.

When we apply our paraphrase test by adding the very next verse, the results look like this: “‘And I, if I be exalted before the people, will draw all men to Myself.’ But He was saying this to indicate the kind of death by which He was to die” (John 12:32-33).

Oops. Praising Jesus will kill Him? I don’t think so. No ambiguity now. In this instance, being “lifted up” clearly means to be crucified.

Understanding this phrase in context sheds light on another familiar passage, John 3:14-15: “And as Moses lifted up [raised in the air] the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up [raised in the air] that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.”

Our paraphrase looks like this: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be crucified that whoever believes may in Him have eternal life.”

This makes perfect sense. Jesus had to be crucified before salvation could be offered, an appropriate lead-in to the verse that comes next, the most famous salvation verse in the world: John 3:16.

Let’s try another.

“My Sheep Hear My Voice”

Many have taken this statement by Jesus in John 10 to refer to the Christian’s acquired ability to “hear” God’s personal instructions to him. “Hearing God’s voice” is advocated as a very useful skill that aids optimal Christian living. Allegedly, this is a learned ability one gains as he matures in Christ. It enables him to sense Jesus’ will in any given situation as he “hears” Jesus’ voice.

Jesus has nothing like this in mind, though. I know because of the context surrounding the verse and a key clarification John himself gives early in the chapter. In verse six, John explicitly states that when Jesus speaks of His sheep “hearing His voice” He is using a figure of speech.

The word “voice,” then, can’t actually mean some kind of inner voice because a thing is never a metaphor of itself. It’s a picture of something else. Jesus must be referring, in a figure, to something else that the phrase “hear my voice” represents. What is it?

The context tells the story. Jesus says, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me,” and then adds, “and I give eternal life to them” (27-28). Note the sequence: His sheep hear His voice. They follow Him in response. He then gives them eternal life. Hearing Jesus’ voice is a figure of speech for the inner working of the Holy Spirit that leads to our salvation. It results in salvation; it’s not the result of salvation. It’s applied here to non-believers destined for the Kingdom, not believers already in the Kingdom.

This makes perfect sense in the broader context of the chapter. The Jews have no trouble hearing Jesus’ words. They know what Jesus is saying. Their problem is that they don’t respond with belief. Why don’t the Jews “hear” Jesus by responding with belief? Jesus tells us plainly. They don’t “hear” because God is not “speaking” to them. They are not among the sheep the Father has given to the Son (26).

The voice being referred to here is not the still, small voice of private direction given by God to Christians, but the effective call of the Holy Spirit bringing non-Christians to salvation.

Our paraphrase test comes to our aid once again:

You do not believe, because you are not of My sheep. Mature Christians have the ability to sense My personal direction for their lives and obey it, and as a result I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all…

vs.

You do not believe, because you are not of My sheep. The ones that the Father gives me my sheep are the ones that respond to my message and believe in me, and as a result I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish; and no one shall snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all…

The first view actually makes salvation dependent on the ability to get personalized communications from God. The second makes salvation dependent on the Father, which is Jesus’ point in the passage.

To Jesus, “hearing” God is not an advanced skill one must develop to open lines of communication to the Father. It’s a figure of speech. Hearing Jesus’ voice is not getting individual, personalized direction. It’s getting saved. It’s the result of the Father drawing the non-believer into Jesus’ arms.

Daily Bread?

This raises legitimate questions about daily devotionals that build a short message from a single verse. In my view, such quiet-time helps can be inspirational, but they come with an obvious drawback.

Fortunately, the liability can be overcome by remembering our basic rule: Never read a Bible verse. Instead, read a paragraph, at least. Always check the context. Observe the flow of thought. Then focus on the verse.

Remember, meaning always flows from the top down, from the larger units to the smaller units. A reflection on a Bible passage from a sermon or a devotional may be edifying, encouraging, and uplifting. If it is not the message of the text, though, it lacks biblical authority even when the quote comes right out of the Word of God.

If you will do this one thing if you will read carefully in the context applying the paraphrase principle you will begin to understand the Bible as God intended. Without the bigger picture you’ll be lost.

Only when you are properly informed by God’s Word the way it is written in its context can you be transformed by it. Every piece becomes powerful when it’s working together with the whole.

It’s the most important practical lesson I’ve ever learned… and thing single most important thing I could ever teach you.

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For Further Reading
Russell, Walt Playing with Fire How the Bible Ignites Change in Your Soul. Colorado Springs: NavPress, 2000.
Koukl, Gregory “The Perils of Prooftexting” Solid Ground, Sept-Oct 1999
Sire, James Scripture Twisting. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1980.
Carson, D.A. Exegetical Fallacies. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984.
Fee, Gordon, & Stuart, Douglas How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982.

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©2001 Gregory Koukl. Reproduction permitted for non-commercial use only.

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