Universalism and the importance of a Christocentric Gospel

     This is my once a year blog! Actually, it is a new resolution to start blogging again. And this resolution was inspired by Rob Bell and his latest, soon to be released book Love Wins. As the book hasn't been released yet, I haven't read it, so I understand that it shouldn't be criticized. But unless Bell pulls a "gotcha" publicity stunt and the book is a complete 180 from his promotional video, I am willing to say that he has taken a dangerously significant step away from the Gospel, at least the Gospel as presented in the Bible. It sounds like the Love Wins argument suggest that Christ's love makes it possible for all to escape the punishment of sin, whether or not they proclaim a faith in Him.

     As I reflect on this theology, I realize the importance of having Jesus at the center of your Gospel. The Gospel speaks a wonderful hope to mankind, but its primary focus is on Jesus, and His glorification. The entire Gospel rests on Christ's work on the Cross, and Christ's resurrection, and Christ's ability to completely transform our lives. It is a story that ultimately glorifies Christ. It is accomplished by Him. I like the note in the ESV Study Bible on Romans 4:25- "When God the Father raised Christ from the dead, it was a demonstration that he accepted Christ's suffering and death as full payment for sin, and that the Father's favor, no longer his wrath against sin, was directed toward Christ, and through Christ toward those who believe. Since Paul sees Christians as united with Christ in his death and resurrection, God's approval of Christ at the resurrection results in God's approval also of all who are united in Christ." When Paul says "It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ," he is saying the Gospel is first and foremost about the work of Jesus being good enough to save man, not about the salvation of man. The problem is that when we make the Gospel about mankind and not about Christ, we ultimately end up with a Gospel that looks much different than the Gospel of Scripture. This is what has happened with Gospels such as what Bell seems to be predicting he is going to put forth in his upcoming book. It seems that the universalist argument that the existence of Hell limits Christ's love is very mankind-friendly. The only problem is that this Gospel removes the demand for a worship of Christ. It is a humancentric Gospel, and not a Christocentric Gospel. In a Christocentric Gospel, the end result is the worship of Christ. That is why Paul, in the same letter to the Romans, says "set apart for the Gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations..." Paul's Gospel was for the sake of Christ's name, which was brought about by "the obedience of faith." If the Gospel only rescues men from Hell, but does not bring about a worship of Christ, then Scripture is wrong. The Gospel proclaims to us that we are separated from God's love by our sin, but that love did win on the Cross in order to bring about a worship of Christ through the obedience of faith, not in order to make it impossible for any man to go to Hell. I'm not willing to limit God to say that that was the only way it could have happened, but that is what the way it did happen, and it is beautiful, complete, and brings all glory to Jesus Christ, God's Son. If His death simply paved a way for all of mankind to go to Heaven regardless of whether or not He gains any glory, then Christ becomes some sort of Deist Savior, winding the clock of salvation and sitting back while mankind continues to fall further into sin since sin no longer matters anyways, there are no more consequences with or without faith in Him. It totally removes the work of Christ to build His Church and the need for Him to send the Holy Spirit to guide us in Truth and grow us in our worship of Christ and continual surrender of our lives to Him.

     This is why it is crucial that we constantly monitor our interpretation of the Gospel. Is Christ at the center, is Jesus the end, or is He merely a means to an end? Does the Gospel we believe in bring glory to Christ, or is it formulated to be more palatable to mankind? Do we try to remove the very antinomies (thank you J.I. Packer for that word) that bring Christ glory in order to reduce it to our understanding, thus glorifying ourselves? An anything-but-Christocentric Gospel is a strong step away from Scripture, which is why we must be wary to maintain Christ's central place in the Gospel story we tell.

Faith and Works Reconciled by Jonathan Edwards

        I have noticed that the gospel is highly misconstrued in many churches today. I am not sure how it got that way, but I have a feeling that a large part has to do with the "this is what my daddy believed, and his daddy believed, and his daddy believed, so it is what I believe" idea that pervades many churches. Your great great grandaddy believed these things for a reason. If you just believe because its what your family has always believed, you inevitably lose touch with what it means to believe, and thus, you forget the gospel. Another huge factor could be that many churches market themselves to increase membership numbers with gimmicky program after gimmicky program. When the desire of the church is to make itself attractive to everyone, it inevitably ends up looking like everyone and not like the Church, and thus the gospel is lost. In one instance the gospel isn't needed anymore, in the other it is feared. 

      The gospel is full of little paradoxes. It is grace and it is truth. It is the most attractive message to the heart, yet it is offensive. It condemns men to Hell, yet it is the only way to Heaven. So when the church distorts the gospel, it is usually in one paradoxical direction or another. Some emphasize truth, Hell, offensive. In reaction to that, many emphasize grace, Heaven, and attractiveness. A whole gospel is required for the church. Afterall, that is the job of the church, to be Christ's body on the earth, and Christ is perfectly represented in the message of the gospel. It is the message that was given to the church to preach and to live out to the world. One of the biggest paradoxes that the church struggles with today is what I call the "faith-works dilemma" of the gospel. That is, the Bible teaches us that we are saved by faith. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God- not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9) But the Bible also teaches that faith without works is dead. "You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone... As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead." (James 2:24, 26) If there ever was a paradox in the gospel message, this is it. Forget 2 sides to the same coin, these look as different as a penny and a quarter. How does the church reconcile the two conflicting messages here, fully including both without compromising one? Is there a reconciling of faith and works for the church? 

      As a believer, I have long struggled with this question. My tendency is to forget about the works part and emphasize the faith alone portion of the gospel message. For this reason, I have never studied the book of James in depth. I am scared of what I will encounter that I may not have an answer for, predominately this faith works dilemma (having finished John, the Gospel of Love, which I have studied in depth several times probably because it doesn't need to be questioned in my own heart as much, I am about to start James for the first time.) However, the Lord has shown me through study of His Word that the gospel message never has to reconcile its differences. It is fully both sides of the coin, and still the gospel message. What is more, if one side of the coin is missing, it ceases to be the gospel message. 

      Yesterday, I finished my first book by the great American theologian/preacher/philosopher Jonathan Edwards. As a side note, I have made it a goal to read more of the Christian classic writers this year. For one because I am sickened every time I walk in a Lifeway and Joel Osteen is on the front "best sellers" shelf along with a long list of self help books and books on how you can make more money God's way. It is scary that "what sells" is an indicator to what we are filling our heads with.  But I am reading the classic writers mostly because I have found that the classic writers speak more to today's Church than many of today's Christian writers. In fact, I have discovered that many of my favorite modern Christian authors are always citing a Dietrich Bonhoeffer, A.W. Tozer, or C.S. Lewis in their books. (By the way, you can't find the works of Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, Francois Fenelon, Charles Spurgeon, or missionary biographies at most Christian bookstores, although I commonly find them in the Christian section at secular bookstores or of course, on Amazon.) So I finished a modern translation of Jonathan Edwards'  Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and in it, Edwards explains the faith-works idea in a way that I could finally understand and that allowed me to work up the courage to begin my study of James. In this book, Edwards speaks on what he calls "religious affections" or the heart feelings and actions of a true believer. I have to confess that as I read this book I thought to myself at times "He is really heavy on works. Do I qualify under all these 'affections?' I am glad I wasn't alive to be a part of his congregation, and he isn't alive to be the preacher of my congregation!" But towards the end of the book, Edwards makes a defense that put the faith-works paradox in terms that I could understand, and I think would be good for today's Church to understand.  He is essentially defending the idea that Christian practice is a sign of true salvation in as in James 2, and that it doesn't conflict with the doctrine of justification by faith alone as is exerted in Ephesians 2. He says:

 "It would be unreasonable to barter our works as the price of God's favor. But to say their exercise is proof of the gift of grace is not inconsistent. The unworthiness of man to do anything righteous is what is important to emphasize. This is the Scripture's meaning of justification without works. We are justified only by the righteousness of Christ and not by our own righteousness. When works are opposed to faith in this matter, we are truly said to be justified by faith and not by works. But this is no argument against saying that grace will be expressed in holy practice. For surely it is inconsistent with the free gift of the gospel grace that a title to salvation should be given to men unless the benefits of Christ be expressed in a renewed, sanctified, and heavenly heart that loves God and is like God because it has the experience of joy in the Holy Ghost. To make light of works because we are not justified by works is the same as to make light of all true religion, all grace and holiness, and all gracious experience."

Let me translate that translation. The jist is that to be saved by faith alone implies that we could do nothing beforehand to save ourselves, that is, nothing at all that could please God and draw us to Him. If this is true, then the evidence that we are saved by Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit is that we can do things that can please God and draw us to Him. For it is not we ourselves doing them, but Christ in us. So, when Christ says "By this they will know that you are mine, that you love one another" and His brother says "What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no needs?" and His beloved disciple says "No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him." they are all saying that you can tell a good tree by its fruit. Not that Christians don't sin, but that a true Christian who has been sealed for the day of salvation is being sanctified. This evidence of sanctification is a changed life, which is evidenced by our works. 

So we are saved by faith in Christ alone, that His righteousness becomes ours, not by our works. But separating our salvation from our works is impossible. For just as we are saved by grace through faith, so we are saved "for good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do." We are not saved primarily for our sakes, to get our ticket to heaven. We are saved for His sake, to glorify Him in a changed life that does good works that would otherwise be impossible unless divine grace saved us. This is of utmost importance to the Church to remain relevant today. If it preaches faith alone and does not teach sanctification, or it preaches the legality of works, then it is missing the gospel, and becoming less relevant. The degree to which the Church remains relevant to the world is the degree to which it preaches and reflects the full gospel. Go one way and you make Christ unattractive to the sick who He came to heal. Go the other way and you can't see Christ in His own Body because you look no different than the world. The gospel cannot be divided. It is always fully the gospel, even when it seems to conflict itself. 

Are we really better without Jesus?

John 13-16 is a confusing section of scripture because of the mix of emotions. I can just see the disciples excited for the Passover meal with Christ. He has recently been heralded by the public in a triumphant entry to Jerusalem, and things seem to be making a turn for the better as far as his popularity is concerned. Then when they go to share this most precious meal with each other, he washes their feet in a strange moment that John recalls as the full extent of his love. He washes their feet as the beginning of the last lesson he will give to these men whom he deeply loves, and then proceeds to give bad news... a lot of bad news. First he tells them he is going to be betrayed by Judas in what has to be one of the most awkward dinner conversations in the history of the world. Then he tells Peter he is going to deny him that very night three times. Then he lets them know he is going to a place they cannot follow, leaving them bewildered. I cannot imagine the abandonment the disciples must have been feeling at this time.

But Jesus knew his disciples' hearts, just as he knows ours. He knew the feeling of abandonment they must have had at that time, and being the comforting Christ that he was, he offers them comfort in the form of promising the Holy Spirit. Imagine the step of faith that Jesus is asking his disciples to take at this point. "I am going to be killed tomorrow. You're going to be alone, in danger. But I'm sending someone else to step in and take my place, so don't worry." I mean, if I were in a disciple's place at that time, I am going to be freaking out inside. "Who? Who are you sending? A Spirit!? What Counselor are you talking about? You are supposed to be the Christ, the Messiah. You aren't supposed to be killable. There isn't supposed to be another after you. We sold out to this. We gave up everything for this, and now you're going to let yourself be murdered? Let's go back to the countryside. We can hide. We don't have to do this..."

And then Jesus takes it a step further. He says something which I think we often overlook in 16:7- "But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." So Jesus says it is better for us that the Holy Spirit comes than he himself remain in bodily form. I have to stop and and ask myself, do I really believe this? Now in the eternal perspective, we will get to be with Jesus again, and that will be the best situation we could ever imagine. But that is still yet to come. We are living in the inbetween, in the age of the Church, and our guide at that time is that Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus tells us is better than if he were still walking in the flesh on earth today. Are we really better off without Jesus right now? This passage challenges my thinking on the Trinity to the core.

As I asked myself this question, I was convicted by my own low understanding of the Holy Spirit, as I think many in the church have today. When "Holy Spirit" is mentioned in many evangelical circles, thoughts of speaking in tongues and convulsing come to mind. For that reason, many, like myself, lack a full understanding of what Jesus teaches about the Trinity's third person. He is not flesh and blood like Christ was. He is more. He lives with us, just as Christ lived with the disciples, but he takes it a step further in that he lives in us. He is the presence of Christ in us today. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." How does Christ remain in us? It is the Holy Spirit that causes us to abide. He is God. Plain and simple. In the same way that we view God the Father powerfully creating the universe with his Words, and passing through a cut up heifer in the form of a smoking pot in making a covenant with Abraham; in the same way we view God the Son as walking on this earth and now sitting at the right hand of the Father expanding his dominion on Earth; so should we view God the Holy Spirit active in the lives of each believer, guiding, counseling, and building his Church, preparing the bride. Too many times we read the book of Acts as the "Acts of the Apostles." I wish it could have been retitled "The Acts of the Holy Spirit" because the focus is on him throughout the whole book. Seriously, go through and read the book of Acts and underline everywhere the Holy Spirit is mentioned. The thing that I so easily forget, is that the same God that moved Peter to go to Cornelius' house, that told Paul to turn away from Russia and take the Gospel into Europe is the same God who lives in us and offers us that same power today. He is the Church builder. So many times I view the redemptive plan as pre-Christ, post-Christ, reincarnated Christ, but I leave out the fact that Christ is building his kingdom right now through the Holy Spirit, and he is using sinners like me to do it. I recently read in a book by Paul David Tripp that our whole lives are premarital counseling, preparing for the great wedding to Christ, to whom we are engaged. That is our sanctification. And who is the pre-marital counselor? The great Counselor. Do we really believe we have this power? Do we live in recognition of the fact that he is God. Are we really better off now that Christ ascended back to Heaven and no longer walks here in bodily form? Do we take this Scripture as Truth? When I reflect in my own heart, I realize I don't. If I believed what Christ said, I would live as if I had the very presence of God living in me.

I pray that I would view God rightly. That is, all three persons of the Trinity. As I view him rightly, I will live in the power that is available to those free children of God who have his presence inside of them. And who will be the one increasing this knowledge and sanctifying me through it? Who else but the Holy Spirit.

Thoughts on John

A few months back, I began to study in depth the John's Gospel. I have studied this book a few times before, but as I was thinking through what the Lord might want to show me for my life, verses from John kept coming to mind, so I decided to slowly study the book in depth. I recently heard that the Bible is best studied as a blank page, each time you open the book, no matter how many times you have read the particular verses before, you read it as if you had never read it, and you let the Word speak to you. I have been trying to read John that way, and as I have read it, I have seen John's primary purpose in writing his gospel. Now, his purpose is stated pretty clearly within the gospel itself: "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (20:30-31) You don't have to search long and hard to discover the purpose of John's writing.

Church tradition holds that John penned his Gospel sometime between AD85-95. Just imagine all he had been through to this point in his life. He was the son of Zebedee called by Christ to be a disciple, but not just any disciple, one of the 3 in Christ's inner-circle along with Peter and James. He saw Christ's miracles, he learned his teaching, he gave up all to follow him. He was there when Jesus was transfigured, and he recalls Christ washing his feet on the night of his arrest. He was standing at the foot of the Cross when Jesus, using the last of his energy, told him that Mary was now his mother and he her son. This meant that Jesus was entrusting Mary to his care. He was the first in the empty tomb, and he watched Jesus ascend to heaven. He was there when the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, and he was a founding father of the first church at Jerusalem. He served Jesus faithfully there, suffering persecution, and when Jerusalem was destroyed in AD 70 and the church moved its home base to Ephesus, he went with it. At this point in his life Mary is long gone, the apostles have all been dead for some 25-plus years, and he is the last of those who walked with Jesus face to face. He was there for the whole thing up to this point. Jesus has so affected his life that he would have gladly joined the others in martyrdom, but in God's sovereignty he was left still, waiting patiently for Christ's promised return. So some 50-60 years after Christ's crucifixion and resurrection, he sits to write his memory of these 3 years that changed his life forever. And what does he choose to write? John writes an apologetic.

When you read the book of John as an apologetic, it makes much more sense. First off, John concludes the whole book by telling us that what we have just read is a select few memories of all that Jesus did, which should lead us to ask as we read John, why did he put this story in there? They aren't randomly selected memories, they serve a purpose. Today many of our apologetics seek to prove that there is a God who actually does exist. In this time (and all of history until the Enlightenment period), no one needed to try to prove that a god, or gods existed. Atheism was not an option, everyone believed in some god or multiple gods, so John was not writing to prove that God existed, he was writing to prove who God was. That is, that Jesus of Nazareth was God, and that in his name we can have eternal life. This is the purpose behind each verse of John's Gospel. This is why the stories and miracles that are included were chosen from the endless list that John could have written about.

I fear today that too many in the church view apologetics in one of two wrong ways. The first view is that apologetics are for Bible geeks in seminaries, and not for the lay-person. I fear that too many Christians today when asked to give an account for what they believe would answer "It's just what I believe." or "It's the right thing to believe!" They have never explored their belief in Christ, questioned it, and because of that, they could not tell anyone why they believe what they believe. The truth is that there needs to be a "why." If there is no "why," then there is no more compelling reason to believe that Jesus is God than there is your goldfish in a bowl in your living room. The problem is that Jesus is more compelling than your goldfish. He is more compelling than anything in your living room, more compelling than your whole house, or your job, or any other false god that this world has to offer. Jesus is the most compelling thing in the world. So to leave apologetics to the seminarians and to present Christ as something that you just believe in because you want to believe in it is to give a false account of who Jesus is.

The other view of apologetics that several Christians hold today is that they are arguments that are great for debate. I ran across this too many times in college. I graduated from the University of North Carolina. Don't allow this university's location right in the heart of the Bible Belt fool you, it is a very liberal thinking university. Our New Testament teacher is one of the foremost Atheist thinkers in the nation! My college days were filled with several students and faculty who hated Christians, and let it be known. So, many of my well meaning Christian friends studied hard on apologetics for the sole purpose of being able to make these liberals look as dumb as possible, and to prove to everyone once and for all that they were right. They used apologetics as a tool for being ready for debate, like some kind of modern day Stoic philosophers. The only problem with this is that while many of the liberal population in the school hated Christians, they didn't hate Jesus. Only the Pharisees met Jesus and hated him, and these people are quite the opposite of the Pharisees. They had met a lot of Christians through the media, or churches that burned them, or parents that abused them, but they had never encountered Jesus himself. So why as believers in Christ would we use apologetics to pose ourselves against them even further, to widen the gap? If one view of Jesus is an ignorant false picture of Jesus to the world, the other is a Pharasaical false picture of Jesus to the world. Both are equal terrible views of apologetics.

John starts his book with: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Pretty mysterious talk. What is he saying? He is saying Jesus is God. John starts this apologetic with a statement of Christ's deity, exactly his purpose in writing the book. Except there is something more to his purpose. "But these were written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."John is not just writing an apologetic to write an apologetic. He is writing an apologetic to offer life to those who read it. This is why he continues in his opening statement "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." Because if Jesus is just God, so what? How does that make him any different than any number of false gods of that day? Why believe Jesus is God? It does no more good than to believe that Caesar is God, or that Zeus, or any number of the gods of that day were god. But there is more, because Jesus is more compelling. He stepped into our world, became flesh, and took on our sin, struggle, and suffering in a way that could give life, in the only way that could give life as a matter of fact. Jesus is God because he can do what no other god can do, he can give life. All other gods give based on how much they take. You do do do, they decide whether or not to give. Jesus gave without us doing a thing. That is John's apologetic. This opening statement concludes by ending the mysterious talk about the Word and revealing who the Word is: "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only who is at the Father's side, has made him known." There you have it, Jesus Christ brings grace and truth, something no other god can bring. And he brings it to us as God the One and Only who was with God from the beginning, and who was God from the beginning. I can just hear John as he is finishing this last sentence saying under his breath in Aramaic "Who would you rather worship?"

Apologetics are important. We have to be able to tell others what we believe, and why we believe it. To not be able to do this is to present a Jesus who is no different than any other god, which is a false Jesus. However, to use this kind of knowledge to place yourself on a pedestal above those who don't have it is equally as bad of a use. John teaches us through his Gospel that we need an apologetic, but our apologetics should be used to give life. We need to study the Bible, to study theology, to know all that we can possibly know about Jesus so we can give life. John's life was one given to expanding the kingdom in service to the same King who he walked countless steps beside on dusty roads, sandle in sandle. He knew the Truth, and that Truth had set him free, and thus he had to use that Truth to help set others free. We should do the same.