Boring Testimonies

I pray that my kids (and the kids in my youth group) will have a "boring" testimony.

I began thinking about this over a decade ago when my sister, who never "ran far from God" in college, brought up the subject. Whole-heartedly acknowledging the innate sinfulness in her heart, her point was that she felt looked down on because she had not been rescued from alcoholism or a life of promiscuity.

The way this often plays itself out in the church is in the use of the phrase: "He has such a great testimony!" 

What we mean by this is: "He has such an exciting testimony!"
It's the stuff of good novels or movies. 

But maybe we shouldn't consider "good" and "exciting" to be absolute synonyms in this case. I say this not because the salvation and transformation of a drug addict is not good, but because every single salvation and transformation of a human soul is good... and exciting! 

Unfortunately the story of a child who was raised in the church, discipled by their parents, reborn at an early age, and faithful in their walk with God (as much as any believer ever is) does not register with our fleshly minds as exciting. It's mundane. It's every day. 

But it's not! It's beautiful... and wonderful... and miraculous! 

It is a gift that God would be gracious in preventing such a person from suffering the long-term consequences of foolishness and at the same time immediately plunge them into the depths of the front line fight for the affections of their heart, a battle every believer faces daily.  

A "boring" testimony is no cause for boasting on the part of the believer, for all are hopeless apart from Christ, but it does seem wholly appropriate to see such Christians as examples to follow. Young Timothy seems to have had just such a testimony and been such an example (see 2 Tim. 1:5ff). 

So I pray regularly that my children are drawn to salvation at an early age. This means that I pray that God would reveal to them the depths of their depravity and their desperate need for Jesus Christ. I also pray that God would help my wife and me to be faithful to disciple our children in the ways of Jesus. Finally, I pray that our children would walk faithfully with Christ, confronting their heart sins with the gospel and daily repenting and believing.

I pray that they will have "boring" testimonies. 

The Sticky Subject of Regeneration

This post has been brewing in my mind for a while now, so in honor of our youth group's recent "Regenerate" youth weekend, I decided that now was as good a time as any to write it.

One of the foundations of evangelical Christian faith is the idea of regeneration (i.e. "being born again," "getting saved," "being changed," "becoming a new creation," and a host of other terms that we use). Regeneration is the belief that, for Christians, there is a moment in time when a person who is spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1) is drawn by the Holy Spirit of God (Jn. 6:44) and spiritually resurrected (Eph 2:5), becoming spiritually alive while still having a physical body and mind which are affected by fleshly desires. There are different ways of articulating this, but this is how I've come to understand it.

Over the years I've run into many folks who have very strong convictions about the doctrine of regeneration. For various reasons, some loath the idea that Christians might somehow be capable of walking in righteousness in ways that are impossible for non-believers. On the other side of the issue, some Christians are arrogant about their supposed "moral superiority." Both of these groups forget that it is Christ's righteousness - both positionally and practically - which is the source of Christian obedience.

The stickiness of the doctrine of regeneration (as in many Christian doctrines) is found in the "already-not-yet" aspect of it. Jesus says in John 3:3 that a person must be regenerated in order to "see the kingdom of God." Paul says, as noted above, that Christians have already been raised up with Christ (Eph. 2:5), and in 2 Cor. 5:17 he famously says that we are, at the present time, "new creations."  That's the already. First Cor. 15:2 states that we are in the process of being saved by the gospel, an (depending on how you take Romans 7) the apostle also envisions a great struggle between the flesh and the resurrected spirit. That's the not-yet.

One of the most central passages to the doctrine of regeneration is Ezekiel 36-37, wherein the prophet says, "I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules."

Most theologians that I've read agree that at least the majority of this passage is fulfilled at the moment of a Christian's conversion, yet the last phrase presents a practical challenge: Is God currently causing all Christians at all times to walk in His ways? We know this can't be the case, because we all still struggle with sin (see e.g. 1 Jn. 1:8-10)

There are a couple of ways we could approach answering this question. We could say that the intent of the prophecy was not to say that believers would walk perfectly in His ways but that they simply now do actually walk in His ways to some extent, whereas before regeneration this was an impossibility.

I believe, though, that since Ezekiel 36 is eschatological, and since it is written from the perspective of an OT prophet (looking forward to Christ), it is probably better to see this prophecy as being fulfilled "already-but-not-yet," beginning with the first coming of Christ and being completed with His second coming.

What does all this mean? It means that there are aspects of regeneration that occur in time and space at the moment of conversion. I think most would agree with this. Yet there are also aspects of regeneration that will not occur until we receive our resurrected bodies (i.e. walking in his ways perfectly).

So the question I am wrestling with right now is whether or not (what we call) "sanctification" is a the process by which God takes a Christian from the initial effects of regeneration to its final effects. In other words, is there any sense in which a believer can say, "I've been regenerated (at conversion). I'm being regenerated (through sanctification), and I will be regenerated (through resurrection)?"

I hope I'm not nose-diving into some heresy I've not seen before.
What do you think? Help me out here.

Creation, De-creation, Re-creation

The subject of creation has been coming up a lot in my world lately, and I've sort of begun thinking about new (for me) way of telling the story of God: Creation, De-creation, and Re-creation

We learn in Genesis 1, John 1, Colossians 1, and Hebrews 1 that all three persons of the Trinity worked together to create the heavens and the earth. We learn that the Father created by means of the Son (Col. 1:16), and we read also that the Spirit was present (Gen. 1:2).

It is also obvious that from the the beginning it was the intent of Satan to dismantle the created order of God. Yahweh established the rule that "in the day that you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall surely die" (Gen. 2:17 ESV), yet Satan stated in Gen. 3:4: "You will not surely die." Satan then questioned the authority and motives of God. Whereas the very heart of creation is life, the work of Satan has always been one of death (Eph. 2:1) - i.e. de-creation.

But the good news of the gospel is that, according to Ephesians 1, the Trinity stepped back in to make a new creation, a re-creation. As in the first creation, the Son (Jesus) is the means by which the Father adopts His "reborn" children (Eph. 1:4-5), and the Holy Spirit seals our redemption (Eph. 1:13-14). "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor. 5:17). "'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God'" (Jn. 3:3).

At this point in salvation history, re-creation is focused primarily on the spiritual realm. Men and women who come to faith in Christ are being "born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pt. 1:3). Though our physical bodies are "wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day," (2 Cor. 4:16).

But this isn't the end game. The purpose of God is that humans be resurrected spiritually first, and then physically resurrected (see e.g. 1 Cor. 15 and Rev. 19-20). We will not go off to live as disembodied souls forever in heaven, floating on a cloud in some ethereal land. We are human, and to be fully human as God originally intended, we must be fully redeemed, both spiritually and physically.

Therefore, at this moment, we find ourselves caught in between the times:
God's creative order is still plainly seen (Rom. 1:19-20);
Satan's de-creative efforts are also obvious (1 Pt. 5:8);
And God's re-creative work is happening all around us as people place their faith in Christ.



"Why should this all matter to me?" you might ask. It should matter because looking at things this way helps reveal so much of the intent behind the attacks of Satan today. If you want to identify his work in our world, look for de-creation. Look for philosophies and worldviews and political agendas which seek to undermine the creative order of God; and, in particular, look for mindsets which seek to downplay the necessity and primacy of His re-creative order - i.e. that salvation is found in no other name but Jesus Christ (Acts 4:12).

May believers stand firm these days (with grace and truth) on the creative order of God, and may we boldly proclaim His re-creative work in the gospel!

The Mark (part 2)

This is a follow-up to a post from July 5th of last year. You can see that post here. In that post I compared the "sign" of Deuteronomy 6 with the "mark" of Revelation 13. Over the past year, I've continued to reflect on this idea, and today I thought I might offer an update.

What was Israel to bind on their hands and have as frontlets between their eyes?
The Great Shema, or, as Jesus referred to it, the Greatest Commandment. 

"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might" (Dt. 6:4-5).

One thing that I failed to notice and therefore mention in my original post is that this statement is not only at the center of Jewish and Christian piety, but it is also the very heart of monotheism - particularly, the belief that the One and Only True God is Yahweh.

In other words, the Shema, the "sign" that was to mark Israel, was a worldview that centered on worshiping the One and Only True God.

And that sets us up nicely to contrast this sign with the mark in Revelation. Chapter 13, verses 16-18 describe this infamous mark, and this passage states that the mark "is the number of man, and his number is 666."

I'm not into numerology, and I also don't want to speculate about the significance of the hand and the forehead either for Israel or in the case of the Mark of the Beast, but one thing does seem clear to me:

Where as the sign of Dt. 6 is a worldview centered on worshiping the One and Only True God, the worldview of those who accept the Mark of the Beast is centered on worshiping the Beast, and the number corresponding to this Beast is "man's number."

To the point. Could it be that the Mark of the Beast is the secular humanistic (man-centered) mindset that exalt's man's reasoning, man's ability to understand the created order, man's power, and man's "morality" over and against the reasoning, explanations, power, and morality attested to by the One True God in Scripture?

What do you think?