Tag: outward and ordinary means

I Wonder What He thinks of Earnestness

Published on by D. G. Hart13 Comments

From the fellow who thought the comparison of Scripture reading to oatmeal needed an injection of sanity:

I had never heard the phrase “God’s ordinary means of grace” until I was introduced to the reformed faith. As a result I had no doctrinal or experiential category for the true significance of those ordinary elements that make up the corporate life of a biblically informed church. If you are unfamiliar with the term “ordinary means of grace” it refers to those elements of our gathered worship to which the Lord has attached his blessing: the preaching and reading of God’s Word, the sacraments (Lord’s Supper and Baptism), prayer, praise, and fellowship.

These ordinary means of grace are the things that the Lord has given his church. They are not the inventions of man. We call them means of grace because the Lord has appointed them as means by which he blesses and builds his church. We call them ordinary because there is nothing about them that is spectacular. They are not rare like miracles. They are ordinary. They are to be practiced regularly in our Lord’s Day gatherings precisely because we regularly need what God offers us through them. But these are gifts not given to movements. God has given these means of grace to his church.

Sounds rather oatmealish manna-like to me.

Is Scripture Like Sweetbreads or Broccoli?

Published on by D. G. Hart163 Comments

Danny Hyde makes a case for reading Scripture in a way that will “inflame.” It could be (all about) my cold heart, but I’ve always been wary of getting close to fire. It may shed light, but it also consumes (as in our God is a consuming fire). Still, what struck me as curious about Hyde’s piece was his invoking the experimental Calvinist vocabulary of earnestness (see John Piper).

I should read the Word with earnestness: “with desire to know, believe, and obey the will of God revealed in them.” When Moses called the Israelites to assemble to hear the words of the Lord, it was so that they would “do them” (Deut. 4:1).

This is vital for us to meditate upon. It’s so easy for us to read the Word looking for doctrine, looking for the theological argument the Apostles make, and looking for the proofs we need to persuade others to believe in Christ. We so often focus on the word Word when we speak of the “Word of God.” But don’t forget that it is the Word of God. The Word is the means that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us. When you sit down to read it, then, you are coming not to an it, but to a Him. This should make us earnest and desirous to read because we are having fellowship with the Lord in the reading and in the doing.

Hyde is not wrong to call his readers to have fellowship with God, to do so through reading the word, or to combine doing with reading. But where does the Larger Catechism actually talk about earnestness? Or why can’t my reading Scripture or attending the ORDINARY means of grace be routine, as in weekly? Why should I feel like I have failed if my worship or Bible reading has been ordinary, lacking in earnestness?

If you do a word search on earnest in the Westminster Standards, you obtain curious results:

This certainty is not a bare conjectural and probable persuasion grounded upon a fallible hope; but an infallible assurance of faith founded upon the divine truth of the promises of salvation, the inward evidence of those graces unto which these promises are made, the testimony of the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God, which Spirit is the earnest of our inheritance, whereby we are sealed to the day of redemption. (CF 18.2)

The members of the invisible church have communicated to them in this life the first fruits of glory with Christ, as they are members of him their head, and so in him are interested in that glory which he is fully possessed of; and, as an earnest thereof, enjoy the sense of God’s love, peace of conscience, joy in the Holy Ghost, and hope of glory; as, on the contrary, sense of God’s revenging wrath, horror of conscience, and a fearful expectation of judgment, are to the wicked the beginning of their torments which they shall endure after death. (LC 83)

It is required of them that receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper, that, during the time of the administration of it, with all holy reverence and attention they wait upon God in that ordinance, diligently observe the sacramental elements and actions, heedfully discern the Lord’s body, and affectionately meditate on his death and sufferings, and thereby stir up themselves to a vigorous exercise of their graces; in judging themselves, and sorrowing for sin; in earnest hungering and thirsting after Christ, feeding on him by faith, receiving of his fullness, trusting in his merits, rejoicing in his love, giving thanks for his grace; in renewing of their covenant with God, and love to all the saints. (LC 174)

Oddly enough, the experimental Calvinists at the Assembly used the word earnest more in its monetary meaning than in its associations with intensity or enthusiasm (or hedonism?), and they used it in connection with the Lord’s Supper, an ordinance sadly missing in many Presbyterian and Reformed Lord’s Day services. At the same time, those same divines emphasized how ordinary the means of grace are. In fact, they used “ordinary” roughly four times more than they did “extraordinary,” and always to the detriment of the latter:

This infallible assurance doth not so belong to the essence of faith, but that a true believer may wait long, and conflict with many difficulties before he be partaker of it: yet, being enabled by the Spirit to know the things which are freely given him of God, he may, without extraordinary revelation, in the right use of ordinary means, attain thereunto. (CF 18.3)

If this is in any way an ordinary reading of the Standards, I do wonder why Christian piety has to be intense, earnest, palpable, or (my least favorite word) robust? Why can’t Christian devotion be ordinary? I eat oatmeal most days for breakfast (TMI). It is not something I order off the menu when I go out to eat. When I enjoy a special meal, I order something unusual. But that doesn’t mean that oatmeal is bad, or that my modest enjoyment of it everyday is somehow inferior. Granted, the word of God is special (as in special revelation). But our feeding upon it can be ordinary (as in ordinary means of grace).

If serious Christians could remember that special can be ordinary — the way that manna in the wilderness was — then maybe we could be content with worship and devotion that is not trumped up to move worshipers but instead services that are word-saturated in the way that everyday breakfasts are dominated by hot, soupy grains.

Why You Won't Find Jesus On Facebook

Published on by D. G. Hart24 Comments

For those who prefer personal embodiment to an on-line presence as the means for maintaining friendship, Facebook has no real appeal. This doesn’t necessarily make non-Facebook users better people but it may make for better friendship since the real me is more of me than the virtual me. (Of course, the real me could always be worse – i.e., less palatable – than the virtual me, which would make Facebook the social media for misfits.)

The tension between the real and the virtual is all the more complicated when it comes to thinking about a friendship with Jesus. Protestants have various hymns that celebrate the friendship between believers and their savior. And some preachers will even encourage hearers to deepen their intimate relationship with Jesus.

But I wonder about such intimacy since how many friends can a real man have? Ten close friends seems about as many as I could imagine managing, though the reality is more like six. Maybe someone who is more cheerful and outgoing than I could have 100 close friends, though I don’t know how you could ever email, call, or drink with such a number of people sufficiently to merit calling them close. But beyond 100 it would seem hard to go.

In which case, if Jesus is a friend, even an intimate one, with all of his children (to mix metaphors), how could he possibly be a close friend to all of the elect? One tempting answer – aside from speculating that the elect totals only in the double-digits – is to refer to his divinity as the source of his capacity to befriend so many people. But it is not Jesus’ divinity that makes him a friend to sinners. It is his unique work as a man who is also God. What is more, in his earthly ministry Jesus was known to be partial to one of his disciples, as in the beloved one to whom John refers frequently. This would suggest that in Jesus’ humanity he was drawn, as all people are, to certain persons more than others to form a close personal bond.

At the same time, the very situatedness of having a bodily existence and being located in a place would also imply limits upon Jesus’ capacity for intimate relationship with all believers. Since he has a body and is limited at least in his interactions as the second person of the Trinity to his physical form, when Christians go to be with him a lot of believers will likely be vying (and waiting) for face time with their savior. I imagine long lines. I also wonder if the beloved disciple will have better access to Jesus than I will. And if I go to the new heavens and new earth expecting intimacy, I may be be very disappointed.

None of this is to suggest that Jesus is not a friend to sinners. It is only to consider that our understandings or expectations of friendship should be recalibrated when it comes to considering our relationship to Jesus. Jesus is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. That kind of sameness is not what we encounter in any of our acquaintances in this world. Depending on the variations of emotions and expressions in those around us, those daily changes draw us closer to some more than others. Of course, constancy of trust is an important part of friendship. But a friend who said the same thing all the time would be at least uninteresting. And this is what we encounter in Jesus who has spoken in his word and has stopped speaking. He has also communicated the same thing to all of his believers – the Bible. Granted, this is a lot of communication and well preserved. It is also personal, not like the computer HAL in 2001 A Space Odyssey. But it is not intimate as we who seek close friendships consider intimacy.

So instead of looking for an intimate relationship with Jesus, or regarding him on the order of a best friend, perhaps we need to be content with the relationship we have. He is our prophet, priest, and king. In executing those offices he may not meet a person’s felt needs for intimacy or longing for a best friend. But thanks to the abiding goodness of his creation, he has provided stand-ins, creatures with attributes sufficiently attractive and persevering to form real friendship.