E-Note 2/25: Repentance That Sings

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

We are coming to the end of our study in the Lord's parable (Luke 15) and Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God. If you have missed these classes, please consider reading the book. It will help you greatly in getting your thinking right on the most important question of our faith: on what basis is a man accepted by God?

As Christians our head often answers that question differently than our heart. Our head says, "I am accepted by God on the merits of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection." This is our sound, heady doctrinal answer safely stowed away in the heavens for the future. But our heart answer, our functional-life-on-earth-right-now answer is: "I am accepted by God (a little more today than yesterday) because today I didn't over-eat," or "...because today I didn't look at sexually explicit photographs," or "...because today I felt miserable about my sin," or "...because today I gave away more money than I have ever given away before," or "...because today I read more of my Bible than I have ever read before," or "...because today I did something so kind for someone else I surprised even myself."

The good feelings that inevitably come from these righteous adjustments are too often recorded in our souls as upgrades in God's love for us. But in Christ, God loved you as much as he possibly could before you successfully tempered your eating, before you averted your eyes, before you felt miserable over your sin, before you gave your money, before you read your Bible, and before you did something kind. How could God possibly love you before you did or did not do these things? This is the scandal of the Christian gospel. God does not love you without condition, without cost. No, he loves you on the condition and cost of Christ crucified for you. Not the Eternal Son crucified just for others, but crucified for the person who lives at your house with your name, who looks like you. You. He loves you with the same depth and breadth of love that God the Father has for God the Son. Though you are a sinner still, God does not love you with a second-class love. You are not kept by God because you keep up with him. You are kept because you are his son. You are a son because Jesus is your elder brother.

Why then would someone tend to their gluttony, avert their eyes from pornography, feel miserable over their sin, give away their money, read their Bible, and do kind deeds for others if God loves them before they do or don't do all these things? Because they have discovered true repentance. True repentance is a turning away from sin in the light of grace. Such turning away never stops for those who have discovered God's grace because such repentance is fueled by love for God. False repentance, on the other hand, is turning away from sin for gain. And it never lasts. Here again is an excerpt from Keller's book on this striking truth:

Some years ago I met a woman who began coming to Redeemer, the church where I am a minister. She said that she had gone to a church growing up and she had always heard that God accepts us only if we are sufficiently good and ethical. She had never heard the message she was now hearing, that we can be accepted by God by sheer grace through the work of Christ regardless of anything we do or have done. She said, "That is a scary idea! Oh, it's good scary, but still scary." I was intrigued. I asked her what was so scary about unmerited free grace? She replied something like this: "If I was saved by my good works--then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would be like a taxpayer with rights. I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if it is really true that I am a sinner saved by sheer grace--at God's infinite cost--then there's nothing he cannot ask of me." She could see immediately that the wonderful-beyond-belief teaching of salvation by sheer grace had two edges two it. On the one hand it cut away slavish fear. God loves us freely, despite our flaws and failures. Yet she also knew that if Jesus really had done this for her--she was not her own. She was bought with a price.

Our last class is this Sunday. We'll cover the several dimensions of salvation that the genre of this parable reveals. Six copies of the book remain at $10 a piece. Yours in Christ, John

What do you think?

Would couples, friendships and churches rescue themselves from all sorts of discord and bruising if everyone just learned Gary Chapman's, The Five Love Languages? In the short essay below, Justin Taylor interacts with David Powlison's careful critique of Chapman's teaching (originally posted here). If you want to do all the "homework" you will find a link to Powlison's full essay somewhere below.

CONFERENCE NEWS. Dr. Powlison is teaching Saturday, March 6 at Valley Bible Church. It is not too late to register for this 9-4pm Bible conference: http://uvbc.wordpress.com

CONFERENCE NEEDS: Each church is asked to provide two volunteers for greeting, directing traffic, etc. You will not miss any of the teaching. Can you be one? E-mail me asap if so.

--------------------------------------------------------------

The Lordship of the Five Love Languages

by Justin Taylor (with David Powlison)

I’m not sure how many version of the best-selling The Five Love Languages Gary Chapman has written. I went to CBD, and here is at least a sampling (I think I caught most of them):

The Five Love Languages: How to Express Heartfelt Commitment to Your Mate
The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts
The Five Love Languages, Men’s Edition
The Five Love Languages of Children
The Five Love Languages of Teenagers
The Five Love Languages, Singles Edition
The One-Year Love Language Minute Devotional
Heart of the Five Love Languages
God Speaks Your Love Language: How to Feel and Reflect God’s Love
Love as a Way of Life: The Seven Secrets Behind Every Language of Love

The gist of these books is that we each have a “love language”—affirming words, quality time, gift giving, physical affection, acts of service—and that we must learn to recognize what language or languages our loved ones speak and to act accordingly.

Many people have been quite helped by this concept—in part, I think, because this book and its iterations contain some common-sense observational insights. But it seems to me that the whole worldview it presupposes has been accepted rather uncritically. That’s why I have long appreciated the thoughtful review of the book by David Powlison, entitled, “Love Speaks Many Languages Fluently.”

Powlison begins by acknowledging that the book contains some constructive advice and accurate descriptions of lived life—it “rings bells when it describes how people typically come wired.”

Powlison summarizes Chapman’s “full working philosophy” as follows:

“I’ll find out where you itch, and I’ll scratch your back, so you feel better. Along the way, I’ll let you know my itches in a non-demanding manner. You’ll feel good about me because your itches are being scratched, so eventually you’ll probably scratch my back, too.”

But therein lies the problem: Chapman takes an “is” and turns it into an “ought”:

Unwittingly [Chapman] exalts the observation that “even tax collectors, gentiles, and sinners love those who love them” (Matt. 5:46f; Luke 6:32ff) into his guiding principle for human relationships. This is the dynamo that makes his entire model go. This is the instinct that he appeals to in his readers. If I scratch your back, you’ll tend to scratch mine. If you’re happy to see me, I’ll tend to be happy to see you, too. So, 5LL teaches you how to become aware of what others want, and then tells you to give that to them. This is the principle behind How to Win Friends and Influence People and The 30-second Manager. It’s the dynamic at work in hundreds of other books on “relational skills,” or “attending skills,” or “salesmanship,” or “how to find the love you want.” Identify the felt need and meet it, and, odds are, your relationships will go pretty well.

Powlison is at pains to show that this is not all bad:

Up to a point, 5LL can be informative, correcting ignorance about how people differ from each other, and making you more aware of patterns of expectation that you and others bring to the table.

But as Packer once said, a half truth masquerading as the whole truth becomes a complete untruth. Powlison thinks that Chapman’s advice—the point at which he moves beyond description to prescription—can actually be counterproductive to genuine biblical love:

[S]peaking love languages is surely not the whole story. In fact, it is practical, immoral wisdom—manipulation or pandering or both—when it becomes the whole story. Part of considering the interests of others is to do them tangible good. But then to really love them, you usually need to help them see their itch as idolatrous, and to awaken in them a far more serious itch! That’s basic Christianity. 5LL will never teach you to love at this deeper, more life-and-death level. Chapman’s reasons for giving accurate love to others, his explanation of what speaking another’s love language does, his ultimate goal in marriage, and his evaluation of the significance of love languages are deplorable.

Chapman’s model, Powlison argues, fails the class “Human Nature 101.”

Like all secular interpretations of human psychology (even when lightly Christianized), it makes some good observations and offers some half-decent advice (of the sort that self-effort can sometimes follow). But it doesn’t really understand human psychology. That basic misunderstanding has systematic distorting and misleading effects. Fallenness not only brings ignorance about how best to love others; it brings a perverse unwillingness and inability to love. It ingrains the perception that our lusts are in fact needs, empty places inside where others have disappointed us. The empty emotional tank construct is congenial to our fallen instincts, not transformative. It leaves what we instinctively want as an unquestionable good that must somehow be fulfilled. It not only leaves fundamental self-interest unchallenged, it plays to self-interest. . . .

Powlison goes on to contrast this perspective with the foreign “love language” of Christ:

The love of Christ speaks a “love language”—mercy to hellishly self-centered people—that no person can hear or understand unless God gives ears to hear. It is a language we cannot speak to others unless God makes us fluent in an essentially foreign language. We might say that the itch itself (an ear for God’s language) has to be created, because we live in such a stupor of self-centered itchiness. The love language model does not highlight those exquisite forms of love that do not “speak your language.” You and I need to learn a new language if we are to become fit to live with each other and with God. The greatest love ever shown does not speak the instinctively self-centered language of the recipients of such love. In fundamental ways, the love of Christ speaks contrary to your “love language” and “felt needs.” Does anyone naturally say, “I need You to rule me so I’m no longer ruled by what I want”? Does anyone naturally say, “For Your name’s sake, O LORD, pardon my iniquity for it is great” (Psalm 25:11)? Does anyone naturally say, “My greatest need is for mercy, and then for the wisdom to give mercy. I long for redemption. May Your kingdom come. Deliver us from evil”?

God’s grace aims to destroy the lordship of the five love languages, even while teaching us to speak the countless love languages with greater fluency.

Read the whole thing.

Update: A response from Powlison to some of the commenters after the jump:

Fascinating responses. I think that my article acknowledges and promotes the various good things about 5LL that several commenters point out and defend. Love languages, in principle creationally, are ‘natural affections’ for good things. It is helpful for us to learn these things about others and ourselves, to seek to bless others, to recognize what brings genuine blessing to us. The “fumbling and mumbling” can be partially redressed by helping both men and women to pay attention to another’s LL. Paying attention to LLs creates more “win-win” in human relationships, and that is a good thing. The first third of the article commends the positive aspects of 5LL, and encourages readers to take those good things to heart. I mean those commendations and encouragements: “God’s grace teaches us to speak the countless love languages with greater fluency,” as I say towards the end of the article. In the language of the General Thanksgiving from the Book of Common Prayer: “We thank you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.” To speak another’s LL brings some of those blessings.

But, on balance, was my article too critical?: “both barrels,” “making something out of nothing.” It would be unbalanced toward the negative if the final purpose of my review (and of Christian ministry) were simply to encourage more win-win relationships. But I chose also to trace the implications of 5LL for harder, deeper problems, both relationally and psychologically. As the General Thanksgiving goes on to say: “But above all, we thank you for your inestimable love in the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.” There are things about us and our relationships that need better medicine. In order to learn to love well, we need Jesus Christ to love, to die, to be raised, to reign, to return, to work in us transforming the dynamic of inner modus operandi. Wise ministry is never less than common grace, but it surely brings something more than common grace.

As the article discusses, Chapman brings a troubling logic to his treatment of adultery, and rebellious teens, and loveless people—and the human condition. He gives no indication that it’s important to understand how natural affections for good things segue into inordinate cravings. As I say, this makes his theory simultaneously overly-sentimental and cruel. The observations and behavioral advice about LLs are fine as far as they go; it’s the theory and the outworking of its implications that become sentimental and cruel. I’m not sure that respondents adequately weighed those issues on the balance sheet. The thoughtful ambivalence of the couple in my opening paragraph set the shape of the article.

The 5LLs really are “the whole story” in Chapman’s book. Whatever Chapman might think in private, we only have his written work before us. Struggling people have only the book, and LLs are the only story the book tells. This is why throughout the book there is no place where Jesus’s love really matters. For that reason, I conclude that his schema for helping people brings light remedies to the deep troubles of life.

E-note 2/18: Avoiding Jesus

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

It is my hope that you are being refreshed in the gospel through The Prodigal God class.

The book and lessons have got my imagination working over time. This week I imagined someone coming into the Church, after being many years away, because they grew tired of a self-centered life with all its peculiar versions of self-destruction. Tired of living for self (which is tiring, trust me!) this dear friend comes into the Church with an eagerness to live a life that is aligned with that which is good, true, and beautiful. He makes gains in good deeds, serving others sacrificially. He makes gains in sound doctrine, defending the truth valiantly. He makes gains in Christian ethics, abandoning bad habits courageously. But somewhere along the way he missed Jesus. No, he can recite the Apostle's Creed and explain the necessity of the Incarnation - he didn't miss Jesus doctrinally. He missed Jesus savingly because he found a way to avoid needing Jesus personally and he found this way through the good works, the sound doctrine and the Christian ethics.

In retrospect, this friend discovers a shocking truth: he didn't enter Christ's Church because he wanted Jesus! He entered the Church because he wanted a better self, a self that would be admired by the kind of people he himself admired - good Christian folk. In the process he found an unnoticeable way of avoiding Jesus. Because he did not see himself as a naked and bloody newborn baby, hopelessly discarded in a field of dirt, he could not see Jesus as the great lover of his soul (read Ezekiel 16 for this stunning image). In retrospect, he discovered that Jesus was his Appraiser not his Savior. Jesus was only there to appraise his good works and sound doctrine and Christian ethics as suitable for wide admiration. Jesus was not there to carry this friend in loving arms out of his filth. Now this friend has discovered that he is naked and filthy in his righteousness (see Isaiah 64:6). Naked and filthy still because his righteousness was an excuse to avoid Jesus as the only God Jesus is to us: a saving God for sinners. Surprisingly, Jesus even has grace for the filthy righteous.

Now this friend is trembling at the prospect of what his life will look like without the level of earnestness that was once necessary for his campaign of self-improving self-admiration. What kind of husband will he be without the energizing motive of self-admiration? What kind of student of scripture will he be without the energizing motive of self-admiration? What kind of servant? What kind of neighbor? What kind of Christian? He needs to ask Jesus because he does not know how to be a man who lives by grace. But, by grace, he will learn.

To cap off this imagined scenario here is a penetrating passage from Keller's book, The Prodigal God:

What must we do, then, to be saved? To find God we must repent of the things we have done wrong, but if that is all you do, you may remain just an elder brother [see Luke 15:11-32 for the background]. To truly become a Christian we must also repent of the reasons we ever did anything right. Pharisees only repent of their sins, but Christians repent for the very roots of their righteousness, too. We must learn how to repent of the sin under all our other sins and under all our righteousness - the sin of seeking to be our own Savior and Lord. We must admit that we've put our ultimate hope and trust in things other than God, and that in both our wrongdoing and right doing we have been seeking to get around God or get control of God in order to get hold of those things. It is only when you see the desire to be your own Savior and Lord - lying beneath both your sins and your moral goodness - that you are on the verge of understanding the gospel and becoming a Christian indeed. When you realize that the antidote to being bad is not being good, you are on the brink. If you follow through, it will change everything: how you relate to God, self, others, the world, your work, your sins, your virtue. It's called the new birth because it's so radical (TPG, p. 77-78).

Praise God that he saves his elect even from within the Church! Yours in Christ, John

What do you think?

Would you please give an extra day to "building yourself up in your most holy faith?" (Jude 1:20) The Bible conference at Valley Bible Church is on Saturday, March 6. It will certainly be a sacrifice to give your Saturday and Sunday morning that weekend, but I am confident that your love for Christ will compel you to do so. As we heard last Sunday in Romans 12:1, there is no such thing as worship without sacrifice. Register online this week and you will get the lowest rate. Go to www.http://uvbc.wordpress.com. Be sure to pick your lunch choice from Panera.

As preparation for the conference here is another reading:

Wanted: Plotting and Provoking Church Members

by Greg Gilbert

If you’re like most pastors, the last thing you want to hear about is church members who, by all appearances, are continually plotting against unity in the church body. Whatever board they sit on, whatever class they teach, whatever friendships they have, they seem to provoke others to discontentedness, complaining, even bickering.

You might be surprised to learn that the book of Hebrews calls for church members to continually plot and provoke in the church body. It calls them to plot and provoke for good!

At our church in Louisville, Kentucky, the other elders and I often remind our congregation of Hebrews’ instruction. Here’s the sort of thing we say to them.

A LITTLE CONTEXT
Most of the book of Hebrews is an exalted theological treatise about the person and work of Jesus Christ. Through nine chapters, the author of the book takes a long look at the Old Testament sacrificial and priestly system and argues that all of it was fulfilled in Jesus’ life and death. With the tenth chapter, however, the author pointedly brings all this to bear on the lives of his readers. "In light of all these things," he tells them, "you are to live in a certain way."

A LITTLE EXEGESIS
Hebrews 10:19-25 lies at the heart of this exhortation. In those verses, the author calls his readers to do three things: First, they are to draw near to God. Since Jesus has won them access to God’s throne by his death on the cross, they are to worship God not with fear and trembling, but with full and joyful confidence. Second, he calls them to hold fast their confession, not to shrink back and be destroyed but to believe, to have faith, and, by these means, to save their souls. With these two exhortations, the author calls on these Christians to keep a close watch on their hearts, minds, and souls. But there is a third exhortation here as well, in which he calls them to look outside themselves and focus their attention on their brothers and sisters in Christ—on the church.

The author writes in verses 24 and 25, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near."

Because of everything Jesus has done, and because of everything that he is, Christians are to stir one another up to love and good works. But how are we to do this? By what means can Christians spur one another to goodness and holiness? The text itself offers two ways—by not neglecting to meet together and by encouraging one another.

Now that phrase—"not neglecting to meet together"—is perhaps the Bible’s clearest statement of a Christian’s obligation to attend a local church. If we are part of Christ’s body, then we ought, indeed, we must, covenant and share our lives together with a local body of believers. The verse could hardly be more pointed. But notice that the command not to neglect meeting does not stand by itself. It is actually a dependent clause hanging onto the verse’s main clause. The command to meet together is presented as a means to another end. We Christians are to meet together for the purpose of stirring one another up to love and good works.

ATTEND
At the very least, therefore, we have to say that, for every Christian, attendance at church gatherings is not optional. The author of Hebrews—and therefore the Holy Spirit himself—commands Christians to be present when the believers to whom he or she belongs gather.

Very practically, this means that we may have to rearrange our schedules to make time for the gathering of the saints. Work schedules may have to shift. Homework may have to be done at some other time. Reports may have to be filed earlier or later. Most churches meet no more than two or three hours a week, which still leaves somewhere in the area of 145 hours for getting these other things done. According to Hebrews, encouraging and stirring up other believers ought to be at the top of every Christian’s priority list, and that means attending the public gatherings of the church.

BUT DON'T JUST ATTEND
But the author of Hebrews is calling for more than mere attendance. Many times, Christians treat church attendance as one more item on their checklist of "Christian to-dos." They attend a church service, sit quietly and anonymously in the back of the building, listen half-heartedly to the sermon, slip out during the final hymn without speaking to anyone, and tick their mental box for the week: "Church attended. Hebrews 10:25 obeyed." But that is not at all what the author of Hebrews has in mind here. He doesn’t simply say, "Attend church." Rather, he sets attending church very deliberately in the context of knowing, loving, and encouraging other believers. He sets it in the context of stirring one another up to love and good deeds.

The public gathering of a local church involves more than individuals gathering to hear God’s Word preached—though it is certainly, and crucially, about that. It is also about sharing life with other believers who have covenanted to support and encourage one another as Christians. It is in the public gatherings of the church that we pray for one another, weep and rejoice with one another, bear each other’s burdens and sorrows, hear the Word of God together, and work to apply it to one another’s lives. In short, the gathering of the church is the most important time believers have for stirring one another up to love and good works.

PLOTTING AND PROVOKING
Notice two more things in this text. First, the author of Hebrews says to "consider how to stir one another up to love and good works." He’s telling us, in other words, to think about it! A Christian ought to plot, plan, conspire, contrive, and design how he might stir his brothers and sisters to good works—something he simply cannot do unless his life is tightly intertwined with theirs. How exactly can a Christian plot and plan for the good of his fellow believers if he does not know them?

Second, notice the word "stir," which the KJV and NRSV translate "provoke." An individual’s presence in the body should have a visible effect on others, a stirring or provocative effect: love and good deeds begin to abound in the lives of the people around them!

In short, pastor, we want to encourage our church members to plot and to provoke—for good!

AN ILLUSTRATION
This past summer, I started a massive project of laying slate tiles on my front porch and sidewalk. Over to one side, under a tree, I kept a blue Igloo cooler full of water, which I used to wash off the dirty tiles after I cut them to the correct size. After a while, I realized that all the mud I was washing off the tiles would sink to the bottom of the cooler, leaving clear water at the top and a thick layer of mud at the bottom. Now, if I wanted to stir that mud up off the bottom of the cooler and make it explode with life throughout that water, how would I do it? Walk up and bump the cooler with my knee? That wouldn’t do it. The water might ripple, but the mud would stay firmly on the bottom. No, if I really wanted to stir that mud up, I would have to reach down into the water with my hands. I would have to get involved with the water, purposefully and directly stirring up the mud.

It’s not a perfect analogy, to be sure, but the church is a little like that. No true church of Jesus Christ should be the kind of place where believers simply come together once a week, bump into one another, and then go on about their business. What a shame it is when Christians, not to mention non-Christians, think that this is what the church’s gathering is all about! I can think of few things that would make a church more lifeless or less worth the effort.

The exhortation "not to neglect the meeting" is not so lifeless and boring as all that. It does not call Christians to sit passively in a pew. To the contrary, it calls them to a life that crackles with energy. It calls them to live together with other Christians—loving them, encouraging them, stirring them up to good works, and, perhaps most importantly, pointing them always to the Day when their Lord will return. "Going to church" won’t cut it. Only by "being the church" can we fulfill what Christ intends for us as his people.

Greg Gilbert serves as an elder at Third Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, KY. He is also the director of theological research for the president at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and a writer for Kairos Journal, an online journal for pastors.

January 2007
©Greg Gilbert 9Marks

E-note 2/11: The Church of the Older Brother

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

In last Sunday's class on The Prodigal God, author/pastor Tim Keller made the observation that Jesus gave us the parable of the two lost brothers so we would see the two different ways people rebel against God (Luke 15).

The younger brother, who ended up feeding swine, rebelled by being very bad. The older brother, who never left home, rebelled by being very good. The two brothers represent the two most common ways people try to make their lives and their world right. Using Keller's categories, some people follow the path of self-discovery like the younger brother who threw off his father's authority. Others follow the path of moral conformity like the older brother who learned to skillfully submit to authority. But Jesus teaches that both can be ways of resenting and rejecting God. The older brother believed his father should regard him more favorably because of his years of moral conformity. But the older brother can not see that his moral conformity has done nothing to make him like his father. He does not have the compassion of his father because he does not love his father. He does not even like the way his father is. His moral conformity was for himself all along so he could establish some leverage to get his father's inheritance. As a heartless moral conformist he is different than his younger brother, but no better. He too refuses to be in the father's arms.

The rebellion of moral conformity is the hardest for us to see because we are in the Church. Because we take holiness seriously we are a people who also take ethics seriously. Because we take ethics seriously we are then easily tempted to think our ethical fitness (moral conformity) is why God loves us. But this is a satanic lie of the highest order. God loves us on one condition (yes, that means God's love is not unconditional) and that condition is Christ crucified.

One of the biggest myths in the Church today, believed inside and outside her boundaries, is the myth that Christianity is just another way of becoming and staying good. Some people become good through Islam, some people become good through Buddhism, some people become good through Mormonism, some people become good through Christianity. Where did such a myth come from? The "Church of the Older Brother" has promoted this myth by failing to teach the Gospel rightly. What happens to children who grow up thinking in their heart of hearts that Christianity is a way of becoming and staying good? They find they can be relatively good without Christ and drift into an insipid Christian nominalism. If they succeed in being good, pride rules them. If they fail, despair rules them. And worst of all, in both instances they remain opposed to God and his Gospel.

The rebellion of moral conformity is hard for those in the church to see. But guess what? Those outside the Church have a hard time seeing moral conformity as rebellion too. Those outside the Church think moral conformity is the Christian message. The younger brother in Jesus' parable, the one who rebelled by the path of self-discovery, he came home ready to practice moral conformity as the basis of his repaired relationship with his father. Remember, he had prepared a script that included him being hired as a servant to work off his debt. His father surprised him and showed him that their relationship would have compassion and love as its only cornerstone. "See, I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame." More this Sunday at 9:30am in the Fellowship Hall. Yours in Christ, John

What do you think?

"Speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ." - Ephesians 4:15

Do you take Christian service seriously? I don't mean cleaning and shoveling and cooking. Such service is crucial to the vitality of a church and we should always be thankful to God for those who serve with their hands. But the service I am talking about is the service of the head and heart. Are you serious about serving other Christians around you with thoughtful, Christ-honoring communication that turns the soul to God? Not just Bible-talk but a soulish care that listens carefully, a soulish care that probes gently, a soulish care that seeks connection where there is silence, a soulish care that is biblically ordered and thus reveals the presence and power of Christ because, after all, our Christian fellowship with one another exists only because we are each in fellowship with the ever-present Lord Jesus Christ (1 John 1:1-3).

Below you will find a second excerpt from Dr. David Powlison's book, Speaking Truth in Love. Where you see the word "counseling" feel free to insert the word "serving" as in "serving Christ's interests in another person's life." Thirty-one times in the New Testament alone we are commanded to serve "one another" in for Christ's sake.

Reminder: On Saturday, March 6, Dr. Powlison will be teaching day-conference in the Upper Valley for Christian called, "God's Heart for the Church." TBC is one of five churches sponsoring this event (see details and register at http://uvbc.wordpress.com).

The Facts of Life, Pt. 2

The War with Yourself
As you begin counseling any other person, you must be gripped by this vision. Without it, some species of self-deception will ultimately call the shots. Your finest insights and best intentions will short-circuit. None of us naturally approaches our troubles saying, “I must become different. I need help. Make me understand. Teach me simple trust, no matter what I face. Teach me to love other people. Teach me to respond well in every circumstance. Take away my grumbling, my anxiety, my pretense, my avoidance, my self-absorption. Forgive me. Change me by your mercy.”

The Christian life is a lifelong “race of repentance,” but we want to have arrived already. We don’t like having to become different, but repentance is the Bible’s word for “thorough, deep-seated, genuine change.” It means turning from old ways to new. You wake up to find yourself living in God’s universe, no longer sleepwalking through the universe of your desires and fears. A race of repentance calls for the ongoing reversal of our deepest instincts and opinions. You wake up again and again.

J.C. Ryle said that coming to vital Christian faith starts a lifelong quarrel inside a person: “You and sin must quarrel, if you and God are to be friends.” Imagine, I must quarrel with myself if I am to befriend God! To deal firmly with yourself is the hard way, the narrow way . . . and the only good way. Perhaps I should say it more strongly. To enter into yourself is the brutally wonderful, painstakingly delightful way. It sometimes feels like death, but always comes up life. The alternatives sometimes feel like life but always come up death.

Honest war with yourself comes paired with incomprehensible gifts. The peace of God passes all understanding, at the cost of all your fears! The love of God surpasses knowing, at the cost of every false love! Whatever you do, get this wisdom, this kingdom of God, this Christ! Nothing you could possibly desire compares. The cost is high: yourself. The reward is higher: no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.

Two Kinds of People
You counsel two kinds of people in principle. One kind will hear and embrace what Richard Sibbes stated so eloquently. Some hear immediately. Jesus can have his say and his way. Others hear more gradually. They may temporarily bristle at what is true, but sooner or later they listen. Even as they point a bitter finger at others or at God, or nurse narcotic self-pity, they listen to truth’s reproof. Hearts soften and they eventually prove teachable. Sooner or later, this first kind of person is willing to come under subjection to God. He begins changing in the directions Jesus intends. If you are this kind of person you may weave and stumble, but in roughly the right direction!

The other kind of person will not hear what Sibbes says. They are fundamentally closed to what the true God is all about. Perhaps they view God as “the errand boy to satisfy [their] wandering desires.” They might talk God-talk and be religiously active and have spiritual experiences . . . but they want something else out of it all. Or they might simply not care about God’s point of view. Most non-hearers crave thinking well of themselves. They get angry when God insists we glorify him instead of serving our lust for self-esteem. Such people don’t want to need Jesus. They want to be okay on their own. They want to be the hero of their own spiritual journey, not a small part in Jesus’ story. To them, Sibbes’s words are a depressing insult, not a doorway into unexpected joys.

Many cherished desires deafen people to the sanity of what Sibbes says – and so fulfill his prophecy. It’s not easy to face yourself, to think differently about what you hold dear. People crave love, success, money and good health, fame and power, marriage and children, comfort, excitement, food and pleasure, independence and being right – and more. Does it make you angry that Jesus intends to revise your personal goals in order to “break your schemes for earthly joy”? This second kind of person is fundamentally unteachable and will not make the daily U-turn and leads to life.

Probing the Soul’s Resistance
How does anyone muster up the courage to take any soul to task – including his or her own? How dare you assert to anyone that most of our lives are spent in fogs of self-deception? Interestingly, modern secular thought has spent a lot of time probing our resistance to knowing ourselves accurately. Tracing such “resistance” became a staple of serious thought about human nature in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nietzsche, Marx, and the psychodynamic psychologists (Freud, Jung, Adler, existentialists) all agreed that people resist looking in the mirror. They wanted to make honest persons of us all, whatever the blows to our pride and self-satisfaction.

The “masters of suspicious” were brilliant at seeing that we delude ourselves. But they could never agree on what we were avoiding or what the alternative is. They could never answer the crucial questions, What exactly is that we’re all so unwilling to see?

Is it perverse sexual impulses? Murderous hostilities? A cosmic dark side in our souls? A craving for power and superiority? A fear of death? The self-serving rationalization and hypocrisy of “civilized” existence? The inequities of wealth, power, and status? Great but godless thinkers disputed each other’s theories; a Christian sees that each was partly right. All these things squirm within our souls. But all the theorists were ultimately wrong because an even darker cinder smolders inside us: “The hearts of the sons of men are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives” (Eccl.9:3). What is that referring to? We human beings most fiercely resist seeing ourselves as God sees us, because we fiercely resist seeing God as he is. We don’t want someone else to get final say – and we don’t want to admit it. We don’t want to need someone else to rescue us from ourselves. Compulsive unbelief and self-sin (an against-God bias) are more ominous – and more interpersonal – than the psychological kinks of other theories. We compulsively rebel against the Person to whom we owe our lives. Our psychological kinks are wrongs done against the Person we are created to love. We are not first “psychologically” false. We are first interpersonally false, covenantally false, religiously false. We play false to ourselves because we play false to God and don’t want to face up to it.

In another word, we sin. We don’t want to know this. It’s easier to admit sexual perversity, a death wish, power drives, egotism, neediness, or class-consciousness than to admit sinfulness in the sight of God. Bad as they are, those other things are not the devastating blow that unglues us. This does.

You must approach counseling ministry with a keep awareness of this core choice in every human heart. The people who talk in any “counseling” conversation come with many different personal agendas. Few people begin with Sibbes’s observation in mind! So start with yourself. Take your soul to task. You will then be better abler to bring the hard and sweet words that others need, if they, too, are to let conscience have its full work.

E-Note 2/5: Our February Themes

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Over the next four weeks we will be emphasizing two major themes in our life together: the gospel of Christ and the church of the living God. To emphasize the first, we begin a new adult and teen Sunday School class this Sunday using Tim Keller's, The Prodigal God. This is a rich study (think fudge, creme brulee, and flourless chocolate cake) through the parable of the two brothers, popularly known as the parable of the prodigal son. My hope is that we will all hear the gospel afresh, not simply again - which is the fruit of repetition - but afresh, resulting in a renewal of love, joy, and peace, the very fruit of the Spirit. There is nothing more worthy in this life of your own "right thinking" (literally, "ortho-doxy") than the gospel of Christ. And there is nothing more widely targeted for perversion than the gospel of Christ. In his opening words to the Galatian church Paul writes: "Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ." Note that this was happening within the church not outside it. Keller will make a strong case that the church must always be re-assessing its functional knowledge of the gospel because the church is often the first place the gospel is perverted and pushed aside. The first session (this Sunday) begins with a 25-minute video, so please try to be in your seat by 9:30am. The three sessions that follow will be 75% discussion and 25% teaching. So that is our first big theme for February.

Our second big theme is the church of the living God. This theme will help us get ready for the wonderful conference being prepared for us with Dr. David Powlison, coming March 6. In his first letter to Pastor Timothy the apostle Paul explains why he is writing: "Although I hope to come to you soon, I am writing you these instructions so that, if I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth (3:14-15)" For the apostles our conduct in the Church is a reflection of our conduct with Christ himself. As we can see from Paul's words, none of us intuitively knows how to conduct ourselves in the Church. We must learn how to be the church and this learning is no different really than learning to love Jesus and learning to love what Jesus loves, his bride. Some of the major themes Dr. Powlison will be teaching on are: (1) What is God’s plan and purpose for the church? (2) How does the church function in the life of a member? (3) What does community look and feel like in the church? (4) What is the relationship between a local church and the universal church? (5) How are local churches and their members to relate to one another? These are the very questions that Jesus, the Head of the Church, charged his apostles and prophets to answer in the first century. Powlison will dust off the answers for the saints of the 21st century. To register for the conference or learn more go to the conference website at http://uvbc.wordpress.com.

It should be a warm month after all for the saints of God at TBC! Every blessing, John

What Do You Think?

Below you will find an excerpt from Dr. David Powlison's book, Speaking Truth in Love. On Saturday, March 6, Dr. Powlison will teach a conference in the Upper Valley for Christians called, "God's Heart for the Church." TBC is one of six churches sponsoring this event (see details and register at http://uvbc.wordpress.com ).

Some of you met David last summer, or the summer before, when he worshipped with us at TBC. David is a graduate of Harvard (A.B.), Westminster Theological Seminary (M.Div.), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). Since 1977 he has served as a counselor and teacher at the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation (CCEF). Since 1992, he has been the editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling. He is also an adjunct lecturer at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia. David has done much thinking, speaking and writing on topics like suffering, marital intimacy, death and dying, anger, sexual abuse, heart idolatries and emotional stress...all through the lens of Scripture. His two highly regarded books focus on how believers speak to one another and what they are speaking about: Speaking Truth in Love and Seeing With New Eyes.

To warm you up for the conference, I will give you brief excerpts of Powlison's writing over the next few weeks. In the section below, where you read the word "counseling" you might also read "being the church."

The Facts of Life (Part I)

It were an easy thing to be a Christian,
If religion stood only in a few outward works and duties,
But to take the soul to task,
and deal roundly with our own hearts,
and to let conscience have its full work,
and to bring the soul into spiritual subjection unto God,
This is not so easy a matter,
because the soul out of self-love is loath to enter into itself,
lest it should have other thoughts of itself than it would have.
- Richard Sibbes, Puritan Pastor (1577-1635)

Striking words, aren’t they? This statement—some 400 hundred years old—touches the deepest issues of counseling in any time and place. The soul of every human being is loath to enter into itself because of self-love. None of us wants to acknowledge things about ourselves that we would rather deny. We would really rather not know.

Do you ever talk with people about their problems or about your own? Sibbes’s words are a slipper that fits every foot. Perhaps your role is designated by some title that defines you as a counselor. Or you might be “just” a coworker, neighbor, friend, parent, spouse, sibling, child, or grandparent. How do you help a person you love to think straight, when he or she thinks crooked? How do you learn to see straight and think straight, when something inside you compulsively bends in the wrong direction?

You need a clear-eyed realism about the human tendency towards self-blinding. Only then will you bring a buoyant sense of the centrality of the grace of Jesus Christ in counseling ministry. And only then will you help people make the most essential change of all, learning to know God in real life. Those three issues—accurate honesty, living mercy, and daily intimacy—are the focus of the pages that follow.

Facing the Truth About Yourself
Sibbes gets first things first. Jesus’ almighty kindness comes to sinful people in order to recreate us as children of God’s glory. He remakes us poor in spirit, so we face our dire need for outside help. He remakes us boldly committed and grateful, knowing whom we have believed. He remakes us tender-hearted regarding the interests of others. As you become willing to “have other thoughts” of yourself than those that arise spontaneously, you initiate a torrent of other changes. The overthrow of your self-righteousness produces wonderfully different thoughts about Jesus Christ and other people.

But the soul’s blind self-love resists this sort of change. The one activity that creates the truly human life feels harmful to us instinctively. What keeps us from loving and needing God with all that we are? Something in us doesn’t want to face the Someone who insists on having the first and last say about our lives.

Naturally, that something in us does not want to be seen for what it is. It is allergic to the truth about ourselves because we have an allergic reaction to “spiritual submission to God.” We say No, No, No to life on God’s terms, and we forfeit self-knowledge in the bargain.

“Follow Me”
Yet the words of the personal Word and the power of the personal Spirit go patiently about the business of remaking us. God persistently teaches us to fear him, to trust him, to love him, and so, when we have ears to hear, we begin to serve him. To counsel others well, to seek wise counseling yourself, or to simply be a Christian (in the rich sense of Sibbes) all involves the same thing: a willingness to face up, to find mercy, and to change in this very particular way.

Only if you face up to your sin and your resistance to God can you see clearly and act gently, helping others to face up to themselves as well. The Bible calls this essential change dynamic by many names. Jesus says, “Become my disciple.” In other words, sign on for life learning. A learner is committed to becoming different. Do your opinions, feelings, choices, and habits currently have the status of divine right? Is how you are a given, something you insist on? As soon as I’m willing to say, “Not necessarily,” I step off the death spiral and onto the learning curve.

Jesus says, “Follow Me.” To follow somebody else runs completely opposite to the self-will that characterizes what I do instinctively. Listening to him runs directly opposite to the opinions I obsessively think. This change dynamic will make you radically counter-intuitive. To follow somebody else runs flat opposite to the entitled self-assertiveness that western culture reinforces in us every day. This change dynamic will make you radically counter-cultural, while every alternative to “Follow me” is just another way of going with the flow.

Jesus says, “First take the log out of your own eye.” Lightened of your sin’s blindness, you begin to see yourself and to cling to the mercies of God. You will treat other people’s failings more perceptively and gently. You will treat their troubles more generously. Every counseling model assumes some ideal of human functioning against which diagnoses are made and towards which the counseling process aims. But only one counseling model on Earth proposes this particular ideal: to see yourself the way Jesus sees you, and to know Christ as the person he knows himself to be. Only the Word made flesh sees into our evil this deeply. Only the Lord of life aims us in the direction of what human life is meant to be: honest love for God and neighbor. Do you genuinely love God? Do you heartily consider the interests of others? How can you move in that direction? Those are the final exam questions in the school of life. Counseling that neglects these questions neglects reality.