Baptism – Does It Save?

Posted on January 5, 2019 by John Samson

by Sam Storms (original source here)

1 Peter 3: ¹⁸For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, ¹⁹in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, ²⁰ because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. ²¹Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ²²who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Jesus’s Sacrifice

1 Peter 3:18–22 is not merely the most difficult passage in 1 Peter; it is one of the more challenging texts in the entire NT.¹ Our approach to it thus calls for both careful analysis and hermeneutical humility.²

That Jesus died “once for all” (hapax) puts his sacrifice in contrast with the OT sacrifices, which had to be repeated daily. That he died “the righteous for the unrighteous” (cf. Isa. 53:11) points us to the requirement that an atoning sacrifice be unblemished and spotless and also highlights the unmistakable substitutionary nature of Christ’s death. The aim of Christ was to overcome the alienation brought about by our sin and to bring us to God, a theme found yet again in Romans 5:2 and Ephesians 2:18.

We must not overlook the seemingly unimportant “also” (kai ), which indicates that Peter is here providing the rationale for verses 13–17. In other words, we should readily embrace undeserved suffering because “Christ also” suffered in this way. Needless to say, we do not suffer in the precise way he did, as a substitutionary sacrifice to propitiate the wrath of God, but we should still find in Christ’s atonement an incentive to bear up under the oppressive persecution of the non-Christian world.

The last clause of verse 18 provides an apt transition to a focus on Christ’s triumphant defeat of all enemies, as seen in his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation to the right hand of God. His “being” put to death and made alive suggests either a causal relationship, in the sense that he brought us to God because he died and was raised, or an instrumental emphasis: it was by means of his death and resurrection that we are brought near to God. The difference between these two options is minimal. There may even be a concessive force to the first participle: “Although he was put to death in the flesh, he was also made alive in the spirit.”

Six experienced Bible teachers walk through some of the richest but more challenging books of the New Testament, helping Bible readers understand what they say about Christians’ hope for the future.

The terms “flesh” and “spirit” do not refer to the two elements of which we are composed—the material (body) and the immaterial (soul or spirit)—as if to suggest that the former dies but the latter survives. Such Greek categories of thought are foreign to the NT. Neither do these terms refer to the two natures of Christ, human and divine. Rather they refer to two modes or spheres of existence. As R. T. France has noted, “sarx [flesh] in the New Testament denotes the natural human sphere of existence, and pneuma [spirit] in contrast with it denotes the supernatural sphere.”³ Again France explains:

Here the contrast is between Christ’s death in the natural sphere, and his risen life in the eternal, spiritual sphere. His earthly life ended, but that was succeeded by his heavenly life. Thus the second phrase [“made alive in the spirit”] does not refer to Christ disembodied, but to Christ risen to life on a new plane.⁴

In other words, “made alive in the spirit” does not refer to an experience of Christ prior to the resurrection, as if after he died he entered into an intermediate, disembodied state.⁵ Simply put, the final clause of verse 18 is directly descriptive of the death and resurrection of Christ (cf. 1Tim. 3:16). He died in the earthly, temporal realm, a realm characterized by flesh, and he was made alive or raised to the heavenly, eternal realm, a realm characterized by spirit.⁶

The opening relative clause in verse 19, “in which,” clearly has as its antecedent the word pneumati (“spirit”) from verse 18. Since the latter has in view the resurrection of Christ, what follows in verse 19 must be an experience subsequent to his resurrection, not prior to it.⁷Whereas some argue that the clause “in which” has no antecedent and should simply be translated “when,” each case they cite in 1 Peter as purportedly similar fails to convince insofar as not one of them has a masculine or neuter noun in the preceding clause that might be taken as an antecedent (cf. 1:6; 2:12; 3:16; 4:4).

The verb translated “went” in verse 19a is crucial for the proper interpretation of this passage. There is nothing in the verb suggesting the idea of a “descent” into hell: it is the standard Greek verb meaning “to go” ( poreuomai ). Its significance is seen in its usage in verse 22, where it describes the ascension of the risen Christ: he “has gone” (or “went”) into heaven, where he is seated at God’s right hand. As we will see below, the verb here describes the same event: the ascension and exaltation of the risen Savior. In other words, far from describing a “descent,” it actually describes an “ascent.”⁸

Three Views

Who or what are the “spirits in prison” to whom Christ made proclamation? There are three primary competing views. One is that they are the “spirits” of human beings who have died physically. But, as France points out, in none of the purported parallel texts supporting such a view “is pneuma used absolutely; it is always qualified by ‘of the dead’, ‘of the righteous’ [Heb. 12:23], etc. If ta pneumata here meant ‘people who have died’, it would be a unique absolute use in this sense. This does not exclude the possibility entirely, but it casts strong doubt on it.”⁹

On the other hand, the noun pneuma is frequently used in the NT for angelic beings.¹⁰One must also take into account the statement in verse 20 that these “spirits” in prison “did not obey.” If the “spirits” in question were living human beings when this rebellion occurred, we would expect Peter to refer to the “spirits of those who disobeyed.”

Those who insist on taking “spirits” as a reference to human beings identify them as those men and women who rebelled in the days of Noah, perhaps especially those who mocked him for building an ark. Thus it was the preincarnate second person of the Trinity, before he became human flesh in the person of Jesus, who through or in or by means of the Holy Spirit preached to disobedient people living in the days of Noah just before the flood. Christ was not personally present at that time but by means of the Spirit spoke to them through Noah.¹¹

A variation on the notion that “spirits” here refers to human beings argues that it was during the three days between his death and his resurrection that Christ descended into hell and preached to those who were disobedient during the days preceding the flood of Noah. From this some have concluded that he was giving them a second chance to be saved after their deaths.¹²

The most likely view is that Peter has in mind those rebellious angels (demons) who sought unnatural and immoral unions with female humans. This is the incident recorded in Genesis 6:1–5 (cf. the parallel references in 2 Pet. 2:4 and Jude 6).¹³ As punishment for their grievous sin, God consigned them to “prison” to await their final punishment in the lake of fire. It was to these demonic spirits that Christ proclaimed his victory and their judgment, after his resurrection and likely at the time of his ascension.¹⁴

Where or of what nature this “prison” might be is not stated by Peter. The likelihood is that the term is used figuratively to make the point that these demonic spirits are in some sense confined or restrained by God until the time of final judgment. “The main point to be established is that there is no mention of going down, or of Sheol or Hades (which is never called phylakē [prison] in biblical literature). Christ went to the prison of the fallen angels, not to the abode of the dead, and the two are never equated.”¹⁵

But when and in what way did these “spirits” or “demons” disobey, and why was it important for Jesus to proclaim his victory over them? Two other texts likely refer to this same event (cf. 2 Pet. 2:4–5 and Jude 6–7). Each is probably referring to what we read in Genesis 6:1–5, where “the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive” and “took” them “as their wives.” This was the “sin” (or disobedience; 1 Pet. 3:20a) of those demons referred to, for which they are now confined in prison. This sin was not the original demonic rebellion, for why, then, would only some be confined and not all? It cannot be that only the more wicked were permanently confined, for Satan, the most wicked of all, is still free. The context in 1 Peter 3 and 2 Peter 2 (cf. Jude 6) links this “sin” with the flood of Noah, and it is likely that all three passages are referring to the event in Genesis 6.¹⁶

The time of this proclamation is clearly indicated in the relative clause with which verse 19 opens: “in which.” Although not overtly temporal in force, its antecedent in verse 18b (“made alive in the spirit”) points to a time subsequent to the resurrection of Christ. What is important to remember is that nothing in this passage suggests that the time of this proclamation was between Christ’s death and resurrection.

Did Christ “preach” the gospel or “proclaim” judgment to the spirits in prison? In favor of the former is the normal use of “herald” (kēryssō) in the NT (but cf. Luke 12:3; Rom. 2:21; Rev. 5:2for exceptions; possibly also Luke 4:19 and 8:39). Elsewhere in 1 Peter the gospel is made known with the verb euangelizō (1:12, 25; 4:6), while kēryssō appears only this one time in the letter. In support of kēryssō denoting a proclamation of judgment is the use of “herald” in the LXX, where the verb often describes the bringing of bad news as well as good. It is also likely that what Christ “proclaimed” was his definitive triumph over and subjugation of “[fallen] angels, authorities, and powers” (v. 22). All were “subjected to him” by virtue of his death, resurrection, ascension, and exaltation (cf. Eph. 1:20–22; Col. 2:15; Heb. 2:14).

One must also ask what relevance there would be for his readers in the first century in a proclamation of the “gospel” to humans living in the time of Noah. On the other hand, as France has noted, the triumphant declaration to the evil demonic spirits was of immediate practical help to those who were suffering persecution:

They might be called to endure the worst that anti-Christian prejudice could inflict. But even then they could be assured that their pagan opponents, and, more important, the spiritual powers of evil that stood behind them and directed them, were not outside Christ’s control: they were already defeated, awaiting final punishment. Christ had openly triumphed over them. Here is real comfort and strength for a persecuted church which took very seriously the reality and power of spiritual forces.¹⁷

The Foreshadow of Christ

Peter’s reference to the “spirits” or demons who disobeyed just before the great flood, as described in Genesis 6, provides the link to his mention of Noah and the building of the ark. Peter sees in Noah’s experience and that of the other seven people with him a pattern or type or prefiguring or foreshadowing of the experience of Christians in his day (and today as well):

The fewness of the people saved in the ark/the minority to whom Peter is writing
Noah and his family persecuted and slandered/Peter’s audience persecuted and slandered
God setting apart Noah and his family in the ark/God setting apart the Christians of the first century and today through baptism

The fallen angels were (and are) in prison “because they formerly did not obey,” that is to say, “when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah.” The period during which God waited patiently falls between the rebellion of the “sons of God” (fallen angels) as described in Genesis 6:1–4 and the flood of Noah (Gen. 7:11), which most believe (based on Gen. 6:3) to have been 120 years, the time during which Noah was building the ark.

Peter’s first-century readers were undoubtedly aware of their small numbers and could easily have been overwhelmed as they compared themselves with the pagan majority around them. Thus they are here reminded that only a “few” (eight persons) were preserved from the judgment of the flood. The ESV translates the preposition dia (followed by the genitive “water”) as local, hence “through water.” This is certainly possible, while others argue for an instrumental sense of dia, “by means of water.” France is probably correct in pointing out that “the instrumental sense is much easier when one considers the typological application: the Christian is more easily viewed as saved ‘by means of’ the water of baptism than by passing through it, though the latter is also possible. Probably Peter is deliberately exploiting the ambiguity of the word dia to assist his passage from the Old Testament story to its typological application.”¹⁸

In good faith or conscience we appeal to God for vindication, that we might be considered part of his victory won by Christ in the resurrection.

Antitype of Noah

The grammar in the opening of verse 21 is difficult. To simplify, we should probably understand it in this way: “which (water) now also saves you, (who) are the antitype (of Noah and his family)—(that is) baptism.” In other words, the experience of Noah and his family in the flood is the type of which Peter’s audience and their baptism is the antitype (antitypon). France is especially helpful here:

The essential principle of New Testament typology is that God works according to a regular pattern, so that what he has done in the past, as recorded in the Old Testament, can be expected to find its counterpart in his work in the decisive period of the New Testament. Thus persons, events and institutions of the Old Testament, which in themselves need have no forward reference, are cited as ‘types’, models of corresponding persons, events and institutions in the life of Christ and the Christian church. On this principle, then, . . . Peter takes the salvation of Noah in the flood as a model of the Christian’s salvation through baptism.¹⁹

Peter immediately qualifies the sense in which baptism saves us: it is not by the physical action itself, in which dirt is removed from the body. In other words, the physical action of baptism has no intrinsic saving power. There is no mechanical relationship between being immersed in water and being forgiven. The only sense in which baptism saves, says Peter, is insofar as it provides the occasion for an “appeal to God for a good conscience.”

“Appeal” (ESV) is the translation of eperōtēma, which others render as “pledge.” If the former is accurate, the one being baptized “appeals” to God, on the basis of the death and resurrection of Christ (or more literally, “through” or “by means of,” if dia is instrumental; cf. 1:3), to cleanse one’s conscience and forgive one’s sins.58 In good faith or conscience we appeal to God for vindication, that we might be considered part of his victory won by Christ in the resurrection (3:21b). It is only in this light that God uses the water of baptism to save us—as it links us to Christ and his victory and promises.

The focus of verse 22 (based on the language of Ps. 110:1; cf. Acts 2:33; 5:31; Rom. 8:34; Col. 3:1; Heb. 1:3, 13; 10:12; 12:2) is the exaltation and ascension of the risen Savior, which signifies his complete subjugation of all fallen and rebellious demonic powers. “Angels, authorities, and powers” is standard NT language for the fallen demonic hosts (Rom. 8:38–39; 1 Cor. 15:24–27; Eph. 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col. 1:16; 2:10, 15). Their subjection to Christ is undoubtedly the content of his proclamation (1 Pet. 3:19).

Notes:

Martin Luther’s conclusion is shared by many: “[Verses 18–19] is as strange a text and as dark a saying as any in the New Testament, so that I am not yet sure what St. Peter intended” (cited by Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 252).
For additional insights on this passage, see Daniel R. Hyde, In Defense of the Descent: A Response to Contemporary Critics (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage, 2010).
R. T. France, “Exegesis in Practice: Two Examples,” in New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Principles and Methods, ed. I. Howard Marshall (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), 267. Paul speaks similarly, although with slightly different terms ( psychikos and pneumatikos), in 1 Corinthians 15:42ff., where his focus is on two different types of bodies adapted or suitable to two different modes of existence.
Ibid., 267. Likewise, Jobes, 1 Peter, 239
For an extended defense of the notion that Christ “descended” into Hades after his death but before his resurrection, see the work by Justin W. Bass, The Battle for the Keys: Revelation 1:18 and Christ’s Descent into the Underworld (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2014).
The datives of “flesh” and “spirit” are datives of either sphere or reference/respect. Again, the distinction is minimal.
In the words of Peter H. Davids, “It was, then, in his post-resurrection state that Christ went somewhere and preached something to certain spirits in some prison. All these terms call for an explanation” (The First Epistle of Peter [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990], 138).
Had Peter wanted us to think of a “descent” he likely would have used the verb katabainō (“to go down, descend”). Achtemeier rightly concludes that “there is no necessity, therefore, to understand the verb poreutheis to mean ‘descend’; it refers to a journey, no more. On the other hand, the verb poreuomai is the verb used in the NT to describe Christ’s ascension” (1 Peter, 257). On this view, then, “the three elements of the redemptive event are in view in 3:18–19: the crucifixion, the resurrection, and the ascension” (Jobes, 1 Peter, 242). 47 France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 269
France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 269.
Aside from Hebrews 12:23, the plural of pneuma is used never of humans but only of spirit beings (whether good angels, as in Heb. 1:14; or evil angels, as in Matt. 8:16), and this more than thirty times in the NT. Grudem cites Matthew 27:50 and John 19:30 as instances where pneuma is used absolutely of the human spirit, but in both texts pneuma is singular, not plural.
The best defense of this view can be found in Grudem, “Appendix: Christ Preaching through Noah: 1 Peter 3:19–20 in the Light of Dominant Themes in Jewish Literature,” in First Epistle of Peter, 203–239, and in John Feinberg, “1 Peter 3:18–20: Ancient Mythology and the Intermediate State,” WTJ 48 (October 1986): 303–336
On this, see my comments below on 1 Peter 4:1–6. One must also ask, if a second chance for salvation was being offered, why extend it only to this select group of the physically dead and not to all who died prior to the coming of Christ?
Although only of secondary relevance, it is interesting to observe that this is the view taken by the author of 1 Enoch 6:1–16:4; 18:12–19:2; 21:1–10; 54:3–6; 64:1–69:29.
The clearest and most succinct defense of this view is found in Schreiner, 1, 2 Peter, Jude, 184–190
France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 271. As noted, “prison” ( phylakē) is never used of the abode of humans who have died, but is used of the location of Satan and demons (Rev. 18:2 [3x; each of which is translated “haunt” in the ESV]; 20:7).
For a more thorough explanation of Genesis 6 and its relevance for 1 Peter 3, see Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2015), 101–109, 185–191; as well as my chapter, “Did Jesus Descend into Hell?” in Tough Topics 2: Biblical Answers to 25 Challenging Questions (Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2015), 63–76.
France, “Exegesis in Practice,” 272.
Ibid., 273.
Ibid., 273–274

This article is adapted from ESV Expository Commentary: Hebrews–Revelation (Volume 12)edited by Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar.

A Case For Christ

Posted on January 4, 2019 by John Samson

Originally posted on Triblogue, by Steve Hays

What’s the best evidence for Jesus? Many Christian apologists and Jesus scholars make a case for the historical Jesus. Having read so much material over the years, this is how I approach the issue. To a great extent I’m summarizing the best arguments, as I see them. But I also have some reservations about the stereotypical apologetic. Because apologist are influenced by other apologists, and scholars read other scholars, that has a conditioning effect, which produces a stereotypical apologetic. The standard apologetic has some good elements, but the conditioning effect fosters tunnel vision, so that other lines of evidence are neglected. In addition, there are bad elements in the standard apologetic.

I. Preliminaries

1. The historical Jesus

The “historical Jesus” is often a downsized Jesus or even a naturalized Jesus. What’s left over after the NT is filtered through the sieve of standard criteria. A historical reconstruction of the real Jesus, once we peel back the layers. However, the scope of my post isn’t the “historical Jesus” in that residual sense, not about a reconstructed Jesus, hidden behind the NT record, but about the NT Jesus in toto.

Of course, there is a Jesus who stands behind the NT record, independent of the NT record. A Jesus who is, in a sense, bigger than the NT. But for me, the real Jesus corresponds to the NT Jesus. While Jesus is ontologically prior to the record, yet our knowledge of Jesus is epistemologically dependent on the NT record.

2. “Bias”

A stock objection to using the Gospels is the allegation that the Gospels are partisan sources since their writers are Christian. But that’s a confused objection:

i) The fact that an author has a viewpoint doesn’t mean he’s biased. The real question is the source of his viewpoint. Suppose a kid who grew up in the tropics moves to Canada, and sees his first snowman. He excitedly tells his parents about the snowman sighting. Should his discount be reported because he’s now a believer in snowmen? But his newfound belief in snowmen isn’t a reflection of bias. Prior to his encounter with the snowman, he had no predisposition to believe in snowmen. Indeed, his default plausibility structure might be skeptical of reports about the existence of snowmen. His viewpoint is due to a formative experience rather than a prior belief.

ii) But even in the case of viewpoints that do reflect bias, that doesn’t automatically discredit the report. I sometimes see moving objects in the sky. They may be too small or distant for me to clearly make them out. But if the motion is geometric, I assume that’s an airplane, and if the motion is erratic, I assume that’s a bird. My identification is “biased” because I know about planes and birds, so I use that background knowledge as an interpretive frame of reference. But my predilection doesn’t discredit my observation.

iii) If traditional NT authorship is correct, then all the NT writers were converts to Christianity. Nearly all of them were Jewish converts to Christianity, while one (Luke) was a gentile convert to Christianity, although he was probably an intellectual convert to Judaism (Godfearer) prior to his Christian conversion. So all of them came to believe in Jesus.

And, once again, if traditional NT authorship is correct, then all of them came to believe in Jesus by knowing Jesus or knowing people who knew Jesus. That’s not bias any more than coming to believe in something generally based on eyewitness experience or eyewitness testimony is bias.

Of course, critics who complain about the Gospels as “biased” sources usually deny that they are based on firsthand knowledge of Jesus. But that needs to be separated from the allegation of bias. Those are distinct issues.

3. Eyewitness memory

i) Another stock objection is the alleged unreliability of eyewitness memory. In particular, people remember events better than words. So how can the Gospels be an accurate record of what Jesus said?

ii) A similar objection is that the phenomenon of the omniscient narrator. Gospels writers sometimes relate incidents which they wouldn’t ordinarily be privy to.

Many Christian apologists and evangelical scholars offer naturalistic explanations. And sometimes those make sense. However, treating the Gospels as naturalistic records of supernatural agents and events erects a false dichotomy. The Gospels aren’t merely reports about a world containing miracles, revelations, angels and demons–detached from the world they narrate, for the Gospels are products of the same kind of world. So it’s artificial to bifurcate the nature of the Gospels from the nature of the world they recount, as if the writers had to be limited to natural means of knowledge. As if fallible, unaided memory, direct observation, or informants was necessarily all they had to go by. For instance, consider Elisha’s clairvoyance (2 Kgs 6). It’s a philosophical and theological mistake for apologists and evangelical scholars to eliminate inspiration from consideration. Inspiration and revelation are no more or less credible than what the Gospels report.

iii) A related objection is whether “peasants” and fishermen like James, John, and Jude could write good Greek. Now, there are plausible naturalistic explanations, but over an above that, xenoglossy is a gift of the Spirit (according to Acts). So if it came to that, it would be possible for James, John, and Jude to be supernaturally enabled. For that matter, verbal inspiration might do the trick.

But supernatural explanations aren’t considered, even by scholars who believe in NT miracles. It illustrates the default secular paradigm that unconsciously conditions so much NT scholarship, even among evangelicals or apologists.

4. Tradition

“Traditions” about Jesus uses the word “tradition” loosely and misleadingly. For instance, Eusebius has a number of historically useful anecdotes about the apostles. By the time that gets down to him, those are traditions.

By contrast, it’s misleading to classify 1 Cor 15:3-8 or Heb 2:4 as “traditions”. Rather, those are examples of living memory. While tradition can preserve living memory, tradition is one or more steps removed from living memory.

5. As is often noted, the documentary evidence for Jesus satisfies standard criteria like multiple attestation and the criterion of embarrassment.

II. Non-Christian sources

Christian apologists appeal to non-Christian sources as part of their cumulative case for the historical Jesus, viz. Tacitus, Josephus. You can find this reproduced in many print and online resources. One classic monograph is F. F. Bruce’s Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament. A more recent example is Peter Williams, Can We Trust the Gospels?, chap. 1.

While this is useful corroborative material, that doesn’t mean non-Christian sources are preferable to the NT. Apologists sometimes reach for non-Christian sources to deflect the claim that the NT is a biased source, but that’s an ill-conceived objection (see above), and we shouldn’t back away from using the NT as our major source.

1. Hostile sources

A subset of non-Christian sources are hostile sources. These have particular apologetic value since a hostile witness is making concessions despite his bias to the contrary. Some pagan critics of Christianity unwittingly corroborate Christianity. Jason Engwer has done a number of posts on that topic. For now I’d like to focus on two interesting examples:

i) The Talmud

Jesus was hanged on Passover Eve. Forty days previously the herald had cried, “He is being led out for stoning, because he has practiced sorcery and led Israel astray and enticed them into apostasy. Whosoever has anything to say in his defense, let him come and declare it.” As nothing was brought forward in his defense, he was hanged on Passover Eve. Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 43a.

One day Yehoshua ben Peraḥya was reciting Shema and Jesus came before him with the same request. Yehoshua ben Peraḥya intended to accept his request, and signaled him with his hand to wait until he completed his prayer. Jesus did not understand the signal and thought: He is driving me away. He went and stood a brick upright to serve as an idol and he bowed to it. Yehoshua ben Peraḥya then said to Jesus: Repent. Jesus said to him: This is the tradition that I received from you: Whoever sins and causes the masses to sin is not given the opportunity to repent. And the Master says: Jesus performed sorcery, incited Jews to engage in idolatry, and led Israel astray. Had Yehoshua ben Peraḥya not caused him to despair of atonement, he would not have taken the path of evil. Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 107b.

Although the second anecdote is garbled and polemical, it’s striking how these Talmudic anecdotes correspond to the allegations of Christ’s enemies in the Gospels. Notice how they grant the supernatural abilities of Jesus, but chalks that up to witchcraft. For detailed analysis:

http://legacy.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/staff/Instone-Brewer/prepub/07_Instone_Brewer.pdf

ii) Pliny

In his letter to Emperor Trajan (c. 111 AD), Pliny recounts information from Christians he interrogated. It documents Christian worship extending back to the 1C. Among other things, it mentions that Christians worshipped Jesus as God (or a god, the Latin is ambiguous). These were Christians who refuse to honor Roman civic religion, on pain of death and torture. So for them, the one God was inclusive of Jesus.

iii) Alexamenos graffito

A c. 200 AD graffito from the Roman Palatine depicting a worshiper standing before a crucified man with a donkey head, with the caption “Alexamenos worships his god”:

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_Romana/gladiators/graffito.html

Cf. G. M. A. Hanfmann, “The Crucified Donkey Man: Achaios and Jesus,” Günter Kopke & Mary B. Moore, eds. Studies in Classical Art and Archaeology: A Tribute to Peter Heinrich von Blanckenhagen (Locust Valley, NY 1979), 206-7; Felicity Harley-McGowan, ‘The Alexamenos Graffito’, in Chris Keith, Helen Bond & Jens Schröter (eds), The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, expected 2019).

Although the Alexamenos graffito is fairly late, it predates the Council of Nicea by a wide margin, and so it’s a useful witness to early Christian belief in the crucified God.

III. The Gospel titles

1. It’s often alleged that the Gospels are anonymous. Even if the Gospels were formally anonymous, each Gospel has internal evidence consistent with traditional attributions.

2. But to my knowledge, there are no anonymous Greek manuscripts of the Gospels. All our extant manuscripts of the Gospels have named authors. And there’s uniformity to the titles. The same Gospels are always attributed to the same authors.

3. Some scholars think the titles are editorial additions. But that’s a postulate that raises further questions:

i) Christians scribal activity wasn’t centralized. There was no command-and-control to coordinate the activity of scribes. They acted independently of each other. So it’s very hard to explain the uniformity of attribution if all four Gospels originally circulated anonymously.

As I understand the process, a scribe copies a preexisting copy. Either that’s read aloud, and he copies what he hears, or else he has a copy in front of him which he transcribes. He copies what he sees or hears. If our extant manuscripts have titles, that’s because because the copies they copied also had titles. So the process is regressive. Our extant copies bear witness to earlier copies that no longer exist. Earlier copies that also had titles. That process repeats until it terminates in the Ur-text or autograph. Either the Ur-text was anonymous or entitled. If it was anonymous, then the title had to be added by scribes later in the transmission process. But since we have multiple streams of transmission, and scribes worked independently of each other, it’s hard to explain the uniformity if the titles are editorial additions. If the Gospels were originally anonymous, and titles were only introduced later into the process of transmission, surely there’d be considerable diversity in the authorial attributions. Scribes wouldn’t know what other scribes did. Scribes wouldn’t be aware of most other copies in circulation. So they couldn’t imitate each other even if they wanted to.

Theoretically, all our manuscripts could go back to four individual copies that had titles, even though the autographs were anonymous. But isn’t that antecedently quite unlikely? What’s the likelihood that all our surviving manuscripts of Matthew to back to a single copy, all our surviving manuscripts of Mark go back to a single copy, as well as Luke and John? So the simplest, most plausible explanation is that our extant manuscripts have uniform authorship because scribed copied earlier manuscripts with the same titles, in a repeated process that traces all the way back to the autographs.

ii) But let’s assume for argument’s sake that Mark originally circulated anonymously. Yet after Matthew, Luke, and John were written, it would be necessary for them to have names, to differentiate one Gospel from another. So even if (ex hypothesi) the autograph of Mark was originally anonymous, we’d expect the autographs of Matthew, Luke, and John to be entitled.

For more on (i-ii), cf. M. Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Trinity 2000), 48-56.

iii) It was, moreover, customary for ancient historians to entitle their writings. Cf. B. Pitre, The Case for Jesus (Image 2016), 207-8n10. As one scholar notes:

The clearest case is Luke because of the dedication of the work to Theophilus (1:3), probably a patron. It is inconceivable that a work with a named dedicatee should have been anonymous. The author’s name may have featured in an original title, but in any case would have been known to the dedicatee and other first readers because the a author would have presented the book to the dedicatee. R. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, rev. ed, 2017), 301.

iv) In addition to the titles, the authorship of the Gospels is multiply-attested in other Christian sources (e.g. church fathers, Muratorian canon).

Assuming that traditional authorship is correct, what does that tell us about Gospels individually?

IV. Mark

i) Mark’s family hailed from the Greek-speaking Jewish Diaspora (Acts 4:36), so he might well be a native Greek speaker. Probably bilingual.

ii) He lived in Jerusalem (Acts 12:12), which was a very literate community. So he might well have been able to read and write. And the Gospel of Mark is written in rustic Greek.

iii) According to Acts 12:12, his mother’s home was in Jerusalem. Her home was one of the founding house-churches. That would give Mark access to many eyewitnesses to the ministry of Christ, including apostles residing in Jerusalem. So he had a wide range of informants at his disposal.

iv) Given that he was an early Christian disciple living in Jerusalem, I think it’s quite likely that he himself was an eyewitness to the public ministry of Christ. This is a neglected argument in Christian apologetics.

v) Here’s a defense of Mark’s geography:

V. Matthew

1. Assuming traditional authorship, this Gospel was written by one of the twelve disciples. He had extensive firsthand knowledge of Christ’s public ministry, both in and outside Jerusalem. All the stuff about the Sadducees and halakhah make sense if Matthew was written in the 50s-60s, but little sense after the fall of Jerusalem, when the Sadducees lost their power base, when Judaism had to reinvent itself in the wake of the temple’s destruction, making the priesthood irrelevant, when the headquarters of Christianity shifted from Jerusalem to gentile urban centers throughout the Roman Empire.

2. As a tax collector, he’d have to speak Greek with his Roman employers and be able to write tax receipts. As one scholar notes:

The Roman administrators of the province and their Roman and Jewish subordinates on the local level are likely to have made ample use of writing, both in the form of documents and letters…It almost goes without saying that the Jews who collaborated with the Romans in the administrative realm had to be loyal supporters of the foreign government and knowledgeable of Greek, that is, they must have belonged to the most assimilated circles of the Jewish population. C. Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Mohr Siebeck 2001), 489-90.

In addition, what you do for a living may simply reflect the job market. It’s not uncommon for people to be overqualified for the work they do. They take whatever is available.

3. A stock objection to traditional authorship is that Matthew appears to use Mark as a source. There are, however, some problems with that objection:

i) A person can be a source as well as a book. The Apostle Matthew would be one of Mark’s sources while the Gospel of Mark is one of Matthew’s sources. If Mark quoted the Apostle Matthew, and the Gospel of Matthew quotes the Gospel of Mark, in a sense Matthew is quoting himself.

ii) In addition, Mark might have sources of information Matthew didn’t have. As one scholar notes:

Even more important, history gives us other examples of eyewitnesses who relied on other people’s testimony when composing biographies of their own teachers. For example, when writing his account of the death of Socrates, the ancient Greek writer Xenophon (who was a disciple of Socrates) used the “reports” (Greek exengeile) of another disciple named Hermogenes (see Xenophon, Apology; 1.2,10). The reason was that Xenophon was not present at the trial and death of Socrates, whereas Hermogenes was. In the same way, it is entirely possible that the apostle Matthew could have relied on the Gospel of Mark’s record of Peter’s testimony, especially for any events at which Matthew himself was not present–such as the early days of Jesus’s ministry (see Matthew 3-8), or the events of Jesus’s passion and death, which Matthew did not witness because he had fled the scene (see Matthew 26-28). It is not as if all the apostles were witnesses to everything that happened in the life of Jesus. Brant Pitre, The Case for Jesus (Image 2016), 29.

iii) To take another comparison, Matthew wasn’t an eyewitness to the events in Mt 1-2, so he had to rely on other sources of information–presumably, members of Christ’s family, like Mary, James, and Jude.

VI. Luke

1. The Gospel was written by a Gentile convert to Christianity. Probably a Godfearer.

2. Sources:

i) The Gospel of Mark is apparently one source. However, since Mark and Luke were both members of the Pauline circle, Luke was probably in a position to get information from Mark in person (cf. Col 4:10,14; Phlm 24; 2 Tim 4:11).

ii) Luke had contact with Mnason (Acts 21:16), an early disciple.

iii) Luke had contact with James (brother of Jesus) and other Christians in Jerusalem (Acts 21:17-18).

iv) Many scholars have noted intriguing parallels between Luke’s Gospel and John’s Gospel, which would make sense if Luke knew the Apostle John.

v) In addition:

Luke apparently had up to two years for any interviews with Judeans in Judea (Acts 21:15; 24:27; 27:1), C. Keener, Acts (Baker 2012), 1:180.

That would give Luke access to potentially hundreds (or thousands) of eyewitnesses, including relatives of Jesus.

vi) Furthermore:

The genealogy Luke provides (Lk 3:23-38) has the marks of an authentic traditional genealogy that was probably preserved by Jesus’s family. Matthew supplies a different genealogy (Mt 1:1-16) which may represent something more like an official list of the heads of the clan of David, the heirs apparent to David’s throne. R. Bauckham, “The Family of Jesus,” C. Keith & L. Hurtato, eds. Jesus Among Friends and Enemies (Baker 2011), 104. Cf. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus in the Early Church (T&T Clark, chap. 7).

vii) One commentator has argued that Luke had access to a Hebrew Gospel: J. Edwards, The Gospel According to Luke (Eerdmans 2015), 14-18; The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Eerdmans 2009).

viii) Finally:

These sources point to a cooperative relationship between Luke, the Jacobean mission based on Jerusalem; with the Petrine mission, which was active in Caesarea and with which Mark was associated, and with the Johannine mission, which before AD 66, was also active in Judea. E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Brill 1999), 401-2.

So Luke had a wide range of informants with firsthand knowledge of Jesus to draw upon in writing his Gospel.

VII. John

1. Assuming traditional authorship, the Gospel of John and 1 John are a witness to the historical Jesus by the inmost member of his apostolic circle.

2. It’s often alleged that an Aramaic-speaking fisherman couldn’t write the Gospel of John (or 1 John). But there are several problems with that objection:

i) John’s Gospel is probably a transcription of oral history. John dictated his Gospel to a scribe. If the scribe was bilingual, John could speak in Aramaic while the scribe translated his statements into Greek.

ii) John’s Gospel is written in very simple Greek–simpler than Matthew and much simpler than Luke.

iii) Galilee was a bilingual region. Take a Roman colony like Tiberias, located on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. So John might well know street Greek to conduct business with gentiles living around the Sea of Galilee. Likewise, the hellenized, cosmopolitan community of Sepphoris is about 10 miles north of Nazareth.

iv) However, there’s some evidence that John had a priestly bloodline. Take the intriguing passage in Jn 18:15-17. If John was a relative of the high priest, that would explain his entree to the palace of the high priest, as well as his discriminating knowledge of the personnel:

It seems to me that the evangelist himself already wanted to give the impression–he is in fact sometimes fond of ambivalent statements–that this is the beloved disciple, but omitted the epithet because in this context the predicates “on friendly terms with the high priest” and “whom Jesus loved” did not go well together”.

Finally, mention should be made here of the mysterious “other disciple” who gains direct access to the palace of Annas, at that time the most influential man in Jerusalem, because he was well acquainted with him or a friend of his (18:15f.). He can therefore introduce Peter into the palace. We should have no doubt that the beloved disciple is meant here.

We could also go on to ask–as was often done earlier–whether the report of Polycrates of Ephesus in his letter to Victor of Rome about John “who was a priest and wore the high-priestly plate on his forehead” is connected with Jn 18:16, “he was known (or related) to the high priest”, indeed whether Polycrates, who was born about 125 AD and bound to earlier Asian Christianity by many ties of family relationships, and of course knew very much more than he writes in the letter, wanted in this way to indicate that the disciple “who reclined on the Lord’s breast was, like John the Baptist, of priestly descent.

Even if we doubt John of Ephesus’s direct authorship of the Apocalypse in the time of Domitian, the report of his stay on Patmos is to be taken seriously in historical terms. It is surely no legendary fiction. How otherwise would one arrive at this very small unknown island in the Aegean about forty miles west of Miletus? Insignificant provincials were not banished to islands; even among Roman citizens that was reserved for members of the upper class. For serious crimes–and banishment was a possibility only in such cases–ordinary people were either executed or deported to the mines as state slaves. Two high priests, Ishmael and Helkias, were kept in Rome as hostages in 61/62, and Ishmael was subsequently banished to Cyrene, where he was later beheaded. For John to be banished to Patmos indicates that he had high social status. M. Hengel, The Johannine Question (SCM/Trinity Press 1996), 79,125-126.

John alone mentions the name of the high priest’s servant, Malchus (18:10)…and later one of the high priest’s servants (whom John alone among the evangelist clearly distinguishes from the temple constables (18:18) is known to be a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off (18:26).

So if Mary and her sister came from such stock (and it is difficult to see what motive there would have been for inventing this connection in such a defamatory context) it could help to explain the family’s high-priestly contacts (Jn 18:15f.) and even the curious statement by Polycrates…

There is little doubt that John is historically accurate in depicting Annas thus as very much the power behind the throne and one who still enjoyed the courtesy title of “high priest”…Only John informs us that Caiaphas was Annas’ son-in-law… J. Robinson, The Priority of John (Meyer-Stone 1987), 64,122,246.

If some of John’s relatives were priests, reaching, on occasion, even into the high priesthood, he might well have some formal education in literate, polyglot Jerusalem.

v) So why was he a fisherman? To my knowledge, because there was a glut of priests, they worked on a rotating basis (cf. Lk 1:8-9). So what did you do for a living when it wasn’t your shift? What about helping out with the family fishing business? And once he became a Christian, that ousted him from the Jewish establishment.

3. Even if the Fourth Gospel wasn’t written by the Apostle John, so long as the narrator was an eyewitness, it’s still historically valuable. In addition, I incline to the view of scholars like Robinson and Morris that the epilogue was occasioned by the death of Peter rather than John. So I date the Fourth Gospel to the 60s.

VIII. Undesigned coincidences

Drs. Timothy and Lydia McGrew have rehabilitated, expanded, and refined a neglected argument for the historicity of the Gospels. For an overview:

http://whatswrongwiththeworld.net/2017/01/classifications_of_undesigned.html

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/august-web-only/defending-accuracy-of-scripture-one-coincidence-at-time.html

https://seanmcdowell.org/blog/unique-evidence-for-the-new-testament-interview-with-lydia-mcgrew-about-unintended-coincidences-1

Book Review: Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels & Acts by Lydia McGrew

How the Bible’s Obscure “Coincidences” Demonstrate Its Reliability: An Interview with Lydia McGrew

For a detailed popular exposition:

Lydia McGrew, Hidden in Plain View (2017)

For a technical philosophical defense:

https://philpapers.org/rec/MCGUCA

IX. Archeology

1. In Can We Trust the Gospels? (Crossway 2018), Peter Williams marshals a battery of evidence to demonstrate that the canonical Gospels reflect intimate knowledge of the time and place of Jesus, based on place names, proper names, bodies of water, roads, gardens, botanical terms, finance, local languages, Jewishness, and usual customs (chap. 3).

Williams also draws attention to differences which reflect the different backgrounds of the Gospel writers, given traditional authorship. For instance:

Otherwise, it is simply “the sea”. This is what we would expect if Mark’s Gospel really were written by the fisherman Peter, for whom this would have been the sea par excellence. Luke is rather different. It uses the word sea only three times and never in reference to a particular body of water. If, as is traditionally thought, Luke came from Antioch on the Orontes, not far from the Mediterranean, he certainly would not have thought of the tiny Sea of Galilee as the sea. He just calls it “the lake” (58).

2. Unbelievers like Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier allege that the Gospels were penned by authors far removed in time and place from Palestine. Yet that raises the question of how to account for their local knowledge (as documented by Williams). Carrier treats the Gospels as historical fiction, where the writers sprinkled the narratives with tidbits of authentic knowledge to creation the illusion of verisimilitude. But did 1C writers have access to an atlas, almanac, or encyclopedia of Palestine?

3. I’d also note in passing that it’s useful to distinguish between native knowledge and acquired knowledge. For instance, when I see a picture with a number of cars in the picture, I can roughly date the picture because I know the difference between cars from the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, &c. For cars before I was born, that’s based on the fact that, like many boys, I read books with pictures of classic cars. By contrast, cars from the 50s and 60s were part of my childhood, so I automatically recognize cars from that period.

Likewise, suppose you’re visiting from out of town, or supposed you just moved to a new town, and you need to get directions. Would it be better to ask a native or ask someone who moved there, say, 5 years ago? On the other hand, a native knows where everything is and how to get there. But there’s a catch. Although a native knows where your destination is and how to get there, that doesn’t mean he can explain it to a visitor. Because he grew up there, he knows all the routes without necessarily knowing the names of streets and distances. Although he knows how to get there, he may not be able to tell you how to get there because his knowledge is based on experience rather than description. He drives places without having to think about the route. Although he has a mental map, it’s not like a street map with all the street names and mileage. Rather, it’s based on landmarks. Or what are landmarks to the natives.

4. Here’s a useful perspective on the NT text:

http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2015/05/new-article-evans-on-books-autographs.html

X. Paul

1. Apologists typically cite 1 Cor 1:3-8 as primitive “tradition” (oral history) about the Resurrection. Paul got that from Christians in the know. And that is, indeed, a significant data point.

2. Prior to his conversion, Paul interrogated many 1C Christians, so he heard many repeated anecdotes about the life and teaching of Jesus from eyewitnesses.

3. In addition, it’s quite likely that Paul and Jesus were sometimes in Jerusalem at the same time. Their lives overlap in time and place. Paul was a younger contemporary of Jesus who lived in Jerusalem at the same time Jesus blew into town as part of his public ministry. So Paul had many occasions to see and hear Jesus. Jesus was a major attraction. So it’s dubious to assume that Paul’s knowledge of Jesus was confined to the Damascus road vision or testimonial evidence. There’s every reason to suppose he had firsthand knowledge of Jesus prior to the Resurrection. Cf. Stanley Porter, When Paul Met Jesus: How an Idea Got Lost in History (Cambridge 2015)

XI. Hebrews

By his own account, the author of Hebrews was a second-generation Christian who knew people who knew Jesus (Heb 2:3). In addition, he was a member of the Pauline circle (Heb 13:23). Ramsey Michaels identifies Timothy has the probable author:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/05/authorship-of-hebrews.html

XII. James

1. According to traditional authorship, James was written by a brother of Jesus. As such, he’d know Jesus as well as anyone, and better than most.

I don’t think there’s a serious reason to doubt the attribution. Although it would be prestigious in the early to have dominical pedigree, James doesn’t capitalize on that association in a way a forger would.

After mentioning the proximity of Nazareth to “the urban Hellenism of nearby Sepphoris,” Bauckham goes on to say:

James lived for some thirty years in the cosmopolitan city of Jerusalem, where some 10-20% of the population were Jews whose vernacular or mother tongue was Greek. These were Jews from the Diaspora who settled permanently in Jerusalem. The so-called “Hellenists” in the Jerusalem church (Acts 6:1) were Christian converts from among these Greek-speaking Jews…Finally, in the composition of his letter he could easily have had the assistance of a more Hellenized Jews than himself, a native Greek speaker with a good Greek education, since there were certainly such people in the Jerusalem church. [Cf. Josephus (Contra Apionem 1.50)]. R. Bauckham, James (Routledge 1999), 24.

2. Although the letter doesn’t contain much Christology, there’s what it takes for granted. Would James even be in this position if his brother was dead? Died in ignominy?

3. In addition, there’s the striking designation in Jas 2:1. Warfield takes this to mean James equates Jesus as Yahweh and the Shekinah. B. B. Warfield, The Lord of Glory (Guardian Press reprint), 265. Bauckham thinks the background derives from Christological exegesis of Ps 24:7-10. R. Bauckham, James (Routledge 1999), 139; The Fate of the Dead (SBL 1998), 243-44. That, too, equates Jesus with Yahweh. Cf. J. Goldingay, Psalms 1–41 (Baker 2006), 361-64; A. Ross, A Commentary on the Psalms: 1-41 (Kregel 2011), 583-88.

XIII. 1-2 Peter

1. If the apostolic pedigree of one or both letters is authentic, they constitute a witness to the historical Jesus by a member of his inner circle. The traditional authorship of 1 Peter is sometimes challenged on the grounds that the Greek is too refined. For a linguistic defense of apostolic authorship:

https://www.ibr-bbr.org/files/bbr/BBR_2003b_01_Jobes_Syntax1Peter.pdf

2. The traditional authorship of 2 Peter is the most widely disputed of any NT book. That’s in part because the style is so different from 1 Peter, and in part because the style is said to be incongruous for a fisherman. From my reading, the best defense of Petrine authorship is by Ellis, who argues that 2 Pet incorporates preexisting source material. By his reckoning, 55% of 2 Peter is composed for “preformed traditions”. Cf. E. E. Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Brill 1999), 120-33. On that analysis, the style of 2 Peter reflects the style of whatever sources he edited into his letter. So we wouldn’t expect a consistent style.

3. Moreover, is there such a thing as a Petrine style? He wasn’t a rhetorician. He wasn’t a professional essayist who carefully honed an unmistakable prose style.

4. Incidentally, we could say the same thing about Revelation. Although the style is different from John’s Gospel and 1 John, Revelation quotes and paraphrases so many OT passages that the style mirrors the underlying source material.

XIV. Jude

1. If written by a brother of Jesus, this is an important witness to the historical Jesus. I see no reason why a forger would write under the name of Jude. Although Jude, as a brother of Jesus, might have some prestige in the early church, he was in the shadow of his older brother James. If a forger is going to ride on the coattails of the dominical family, why not The Gospel According Mary or The Acts of Mary? Why settle for Jude?

2. There’s some debate about whether the Greek is too good for a Jewish peasant. That invites the same explanations as Peter, James, and John (see above).

3. On the one hand, Jude reflects a 1C Palestinian Judeo-Christian provenance. Cf. R. Bauckham, Jude and the Relatives of Jesus (T&T Clark 1990), chap. 4. In addition, as another scholar notes:

While writing in Greek, Jude nevertheless used the Hebrew version of the Scriptures rather than one of the Greek translations. Furthermore, the quotation from 1 Enoch 9 shows the imprint of an Aramaic, not Greek source. K. Jobes, Letters to the Churches (Zondervan 2011), 241.

On the hand, if the recipients are Messianic Palestinian Jews, why was it written in Greek rather than Aramaic? Likewise, the opponents seem to have typical pagan vices rather than Jewish vices.

One explanation is that Jude is writing with a view to gentile mission in Roman Palestine. His writing naturally reflects the framework of his Palestinian Jewish background. But that’s directed at gentiles in Palestine and thereabouts. However, that stream of Christianity dried up after the fall of Jerusalem. Cf. R. Bauckham, “James and the Jerusalem Church,” The Book of Acts in Its Palestinian Setting, R. Bauckham, ed. (Eerdmans 1995), 426-7.

4. In v5, identifies the Yahweh of the Exodus and wilderness wandering as a Christophany:

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt, afterward destroyed those who did not believe.

On both internal and external grounds, “Jesus” (rather than “Lord”) is most likely the original reading. On the one hand, it is “the best attested reading among Greek and versional witnesses”. On the other hand, it’s represents the harder reading (lectio difficilior). Cf. B. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (UBS, 2nd ed., 1994), 657-8.

Some commentators balk at that identification. If, however, Jesus is God Incarnate, and if he said and did things to manifest his true identity to observers like his brother Jude, then it’s not surprising that Jude says that.

XV. Revelation

See VII & XIII (above).

XVI. Argument from prophecy

The argument from prophecy is hard to summarize. There are roughly two kinds of argument from prophecy. One is focussed on a particular oracle. The other on tracing out an unfolding messianic motif across the OT.

T. D. Alexander, The Servant King: The Bible’s Portrait of the Messiah (Regent College Publishing, 2003)

Herbert Bateman et al. Jesus the Messiah: Tracing the Promises, Expectations, and Coming of Israel’s King (Kregel, 2012)

J. Alec Motyer, Look to the Rock: An Old Testament Background to Our Understanding of Christ (Kregel Academic & Professional; 1st ed., 2004)

O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Prophets (P & R Publishing, 2008)

Michael Rydelnik’s The Messianic Hope: Is the Hebrew Bible Really Messianic? (B& H 2010)

John H. Sailhamer, The Meaning of the Pentateuch: Revelation, Composition and Interpretation (IVP, 2009)

XVII. Argument from miracles/religious experience

Many Christian apologists overemphasize the documentary evidence for Christianity. But the evidence for Christianity isn’t confined to ancient documentary evidence. Christianity is a living religion of a living Savior God.

Craig Keener, Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts, 2 vols. (Baker, 2011)
Craig Keener, “The Historicity of Nature Miracles”, Graham H. Twelftree, ed. The Nature Miracles of Jesus (Wipf and Stock 2017), chap. 2.

Rex Gardner, Healing Miracles: A Doctor Investigates (Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd, 1986)

http://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Derren-Brown-wants-to-see-objective-evidence-for-miracles-Challenge-accepted

Robert Larmer, The Legitimacy of Miracle (Lexington Books, 2013), appendix.

Robert Larmer, Dialogues on Miracle (Wipf & Stock, 2015), appendix.

Visions of Jesus

Tom Doyle, Dreams and Visions: Is Jesus Awakening the Muslim World? (Thomas Nelson 2012)

David Garrison, A Wind In The House Of Islam: How God Is Drawing Muslims Around The World To Faith In Jesus Christ (Wigtake Resources LLC 2014)

—–

Gospel Centered Maximum Effort

Posted on January 2, 2019 by John Samson

As we enter this New Year…

Text: Phil. 3:1-16

Biblical Tithing?

Posted on January 2, 2019 by John Samson

Conrad Mbewe:

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2019 by John Samson

Worshiping Together?

Posted on December 30, 2018 by John Samson

https://founders.org/2018/12/29/to-worship-or-not-to-worship-that-shouldnt-be-the-question/

Article by Tom Ascol (original source here: https://founders.org/2018/12/29/to-worship-or-not-to-worship-that-shouldnt-be-the-question/ )

Summit Church in Durham, NC (where SBC President, JD Greear is pastor), announced that they are not holding any worship services this last weekend of the year. Instead, they are encouraging their members to #worshipathome. In the video prepared for their people to watch as they #worshipathome there is a repeated reference to being “gathered together virtually” (I did note that there was no corresponding encouragement to “give virtually;” on the contrary there was a very explicit appeal to give actually before the year ends). This was said even though Psalm 34:3 was quoted: “Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name ~~virtually~~ together.” No wonder irony is so hard to do anymore.

Later in the video (around the 19:00 mark) JD Greear explains Summit Church’s “semi-tradition” of not worshiping together on the last Sunday of the year, partly because of the intensity of their Christmas at DPAC production (complete with a “Angels We Have Heard on High”/“Let it Go” medley; it starts at 15:05, but keep watching) and partly because they know this is a “busy travel time.”

Thinking Christians know intuitively that something is just not right about a church canceling its worship service because people are tired. But when good, respected church leaders do it, it can tend to be a bit disorienting. Make no mistake, JD Greear and the Summit Church he pastors are both highly respected, and for good reasons.

From all indications JD is an amazing leader. Former missionary. Author. Church revitalilzer. Denominational unifier. And, as I already mentioned, current SBC President. Still not convinced? Then let Momma Pop persuade you (this remains my all-time-favorite SBC campaign videos—if you didn’t like JD before, you can’t help but like him after watching!). I admire JD and rejoice in all the good that he is doing for the kingdom. Which is why I am disheartened by the decision of Summit Church to cancel their worship services on Sunday.

I am concerned because as such a prominent and influential leader, JD’s public reasoning on this will inevitably lead other pastors and churches to think similarly, which is to say, to think unbiblically about a church’s gathered worship.

Why do Christ’s churches meet weekly? Because Scripture convinces us that is what Christ would have us do. God worked six days in creation and rested the seventh and calls His people to follow His pattern (Exodus 20:8-11). Under the old covenant, that meant resting and worshiping on the seventh day of the week. Under the new covenant, with the resurrection of Christ on the first day of the week, the pattern was kept but the day changed (John 20:1; Revelation 1:10; 1 Corinthians 16:2). You may not be convinced by these reasons but you will at least be compelled to admit that they a biblical argument rather than a pragmatic one is being employed. The same cannot be said for the very public cancelling of Summit RDU’s worship services.

That, brothers and sisters, is what makes this a serious problem. If it is legitimate to cancel services because of being tired one Sunday a year, why not two Sundays? Or 12? Or 52? Once you leave the authority of Scripture behind, anything goes.

What a contrast we are given with the attitude and actions of our persecuted brothers and sisters in China. If you have not been following the Chinese government’s crackdown on Christians over the last ten month, let me encourage you to get up to speed post haste. Pastor Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Church has, along with more than 100 of his fellow members, been arrested, harassed and worse in recent weeks. Pastor Yi made sure to prepare written documents in advance of the persecution he saw coming. He wanted to make sure his church would be properly instructed about how to think and react to persecution if he were no longer available to teach them.

I particularly want to call to your attention his “14 Decisions: In the Face of Persecution, What Will I Do?” The very first decision is this:

Do not stop gathering together
Under no circumstances will we stop or give up on gathering publicly, especially the corporate worship of believers on Sunday. God’s sovereignty is higher than any secular authority and the church’s mission and the Bible’s teaching on not neglecting to gather together is higher than any secular law. Regardless of whether the Religious Affairs Bureau and the police take administrative and forceful measures toward Sunday worship, whether or not their enforcement follows due process, I will resist by peaceful means. I will not cooperate with the police banning, shutting down, dissolving, or sealing up the church and its gathering. I will not stop convening, hosting and participating in the church’s public worship, until the police seizes my personal freedom by force.

Our Chinese brothers refuse to give up under persecution what so many American Christians voluntarily neglect or dismisses under ease. Could it be that we enjoyed gospel privileges so long that we have taken them for granted? Could it be that we have affirmed the authority of God’s Word so long that we have come to assume that we are submitted to it, when in reality we don’t think much about it at all?

Modern evangelicals in general (and Southern Baptists in particular) are not in any danger of rejecting the authority of Scripture out of hand. Our danger is losing the authority of Scripture by assuming that we are being submissive to it when we go following our own whims. May God deliver us from such a deadly mistake.

The Content of the New Hampshire Baptist Confession

Posted on December 28, 2018 by John Samson

by Tom Nettles

https://founders.org/2018/06/19/the-noble-new-hampshire-confession/

(original source)

Every confession of faith has its own historic context and yields a more accurate understanding when its words are seen in light of that context. This rather obvious truism, however, is particularly relevant to understanding the New Hampshire Confession of Faith. Given the normative status of the Second London Confession for Baptists from New England to the deep South, several rather intense doctrinal challenges to early 19^thcentury Baptists made a confessional response necessary for Calvinistic missionary Baptists.

One movement to which response was urgent came in the development of the Anti-mission Society Movement. The conversion of Adoniram Judson, Ann Judson, and Luther Rice to Baptist views in 1812, led to the formation of the General Missionary Convention among Baptists. By the mid-1820’s a reaction was in progress against the Convention and other missionary societies over ecclesiological matters in the main. Some, however, began to raise doctrinal resistance, considering the effort to be tinged with Arminian assumptions. One Primitive Baptist historian remarked that the “Fullerite heresies” stirred great discord and turmoil, and in being the foundation of the modern missionary system produced “an innovation and a human appendage to the church of Christ, worldly in character and insulting in its nature to the King of Zion.” A response to the developing hyper-calvinism of the Primitive movement was necessary.

In addition, on the other side of the doctrinal spectrum, Baptists saw the growing impact of Charles Finney on New England theology. Two points are important for us to consider as influences on the language of the New Hampshire confession. First is Finney’s particular construction of the voluntary nature of all human decision. Since “God cannot save men without their concurrence,” God must induce human cooperation within the existing moral fabric of human nature. If God works by providence and his Spirit “to the utmost extent he wisely can, and all in vain, there remains nothing more which, as a moral governor, he can do to save him.” This view of God’s necessary cooperation with human will makes the idea of moral inability an absurdity. Commands always imply present ability. Natural ability cannot be distinguished from but must include moral ability. Every command implies the moral power to obey. Conversion, therefore depends on four confluent causes. The Spirit of God brings light and moral suasion; the truth embodies the motivational content which the Spirit uses to “induce the sinner to turn.” Third, the preacher is a secondary agent to present the truth, and, finally, the sinner himself does the actual turning, changes his heart as his own act.

The third contextual influence, and perhaps most immediately pertinent, is the emergence of Free will Baptists under the influence of Benjamin Randall. Coming under conviction as a result of thoughts that plagued him after the death of George Whitefield, Randall sought to know if saving mercy still was available to him. When he was converted, he had a vision of saving grace that brought him to this conviction about the saving work of Christ: “I saw in him a universal love, a universal atonement, a universal call to mankind, and was confident that none would ever perish, but those that refused to obey it.” After a mystical experience in which God showed him that his views of universal grace were consistent with Romans 8:29, 30 and Ephesians 1:3-6, he began forming churches based on increasingly strong Arminian convictions.

Randall died in 1807. The Free Will Baptist movement grew and in 1826 began publishing The Free Will Baptist Magazine. By 1833 they initiated a foreign mission outreach. In 1832 the General Conference approved the writing of a confession of faith, an action that Benjamin Randall never would have approved. This confession was adopted in 1834, the year after the New Hampshire Baptist Association’s adoption of the New Hampshire Confession. This Free Will Baptist Confession gave clear delineation of its distinctive doctrines. With Finneyite overtones, they stated, “God has endowed man with power of free choice, and governs him by moral laws and motives; and this power of free choice is the exact measure of man’s responsibility.” While affirming absolute foreknowledge they distinguish between God’s future knowledge and his decree. “All events are present with God from everlasting to everlasting; but His knowledge of them does not in any sense cause them, nor does He decree all events which He knows will occur.” The gospel call to repentance must be matched by the universal extent of the atonement and the universal strivings of the Spirit, so that: “The call of the gospel is co-extensive with the atonement to all men, both by the word and strivings of the Spirit, so that salvation is rendered equally possible to all; and if any fail of eternal life, the fault is wholly his own.” In confessing the necessity of both the atoning work of Christ and the renovating work of the Spirit, the Free Will Baptists asserted, ‘both of which are freely provided for every descendent of Adam.” On perseverance, they stated strong hopes that the “truly regenerate will persevere unto the end, and be saved, through the power of divine grace which is pledged for their support.” This, however is “neither determined nor certain” for they may yet, because of infirmity and temptation, “make shipwreck of their faith and be lost.”

In light of all of these challenges, the New Hampshire Baptist Convention appointed a committee in 1830 to present a confession of faith that would summarize the views of the churches of the convention. After several revisions both by individuals and other committees, it was finally presented in 1833 by the board of the convention and recommended to the churches for adoption. In 1853, J. Newton Brown added two articles, “Repentance and Faith” and Sanctification,” and published the confession in a book he put together entitled The Baptist Church Manual.

Some historians have viewed this confession as a capitulation to the Free Will movement. This, combined with the revivalism of the age, had worn away the sharp edges of their Calvinistic persuasion. William Lumpkin surmised that this combination had “produced a revolt against the rigid theological system of some Calvinistic Baptists. The New Hampshire Convention thus sought to restate its Calvinism in very moderate tones.” William J. McGlothlin wrote that “it is doubtful if it ought to be called Calvinistic, since it is non-commital on every point of difference between the Calvinistic and Arminian systems.”

My personal investigation of the theology and historical context does not yield the same judgment. I view this confession as fundamentally loyal to the Calvinistic tradition. They did not capitulate to doctrines viewed as inconsistent with the historically expressed biblical faith of Baptists. It employs, however, phrases and carefully constructed ideas that stress the existence in the Calvinistic doctrines concepts that were not explored sufficiently by the Primitives on the one hand, or were misrepresented by the Arminians on the other. To this I will give the next part in this series.

ARTICLE 2

In our last entry, we examined the complex context in which the New Hampshire Confession of Faith was written—the anti-mission-society movement, the Free Will Baptist movement, and the phenomenon of Charles Finney’s impact on Baptist ideas. In this entry we begin an examination of its content.

These challenges prompted the New Hampshire Baptist Convention to appoint a committee in 1830 to present a confession of faith that would summarize the views of the churches of the Convention. After several revisions both by individuals and other committees, it was finally presented in 1833 by the Board of the Convention and recommended to the churches for Adoption. In 1853, J. Newton Brown added two articles, “Repentance and Faith” and Sanctification,” and published the confession in a book he put together entitled The Baptist Church Manual.

One of the dilemmas implied by the varied theological dynamics may be stated in these questions: “If election is true, is there sufficient moral justification for the condemnation of sinners. Can men actually be seen as responsible if a divine decree rules their eternity and moral inability rules their present? Does not this render the preaching of the gospel a futile, irrelevant, and unnecessary exercise? Or, since the divine decree determines all things, both the salvation or condemnation of individuals and the providential means by which they come to hear the gospel, is it not an intrusion of the divine prerogative and honor to impose extraordinary human effort in going to the unconverted?”

Some historians have viewed this confession as a capitulation to the Free Will movement giving only minimal assertions of the former strong Calvinism of the New Hampshire Baptists. This movement, combined with the revivalism of the age, had worn away the sharp edges of their Calvinistic persuasion. William Lumpkin surmised, “In point of fact, the theological views of Calvinistic Baptist in the New Hampshire area had been considerably modified after 1780. . . . The Free Will Baptist message was welcomed with enthusiasm by the great middle class in New England and its warm evangelism produced a revolt against the rigid theological system of some Calvinistic Baptists. The New Hampshire Convention thus sought to restate its Calvinism in very moderate tones. [Lumpkin, 376f] O. C. S. Wallace wrote an exposition of the confession and referred to the ‘non-commital character of certain parts of the declaration.” William J. McGlothlin observed that “it is doubtful if it ought to be called Calvinistic, since it is non-commital on every point of difference between the Calvinistic and Arminian systems.” He called it “very brief and very moderately Calvinistic” and reflects the moderating tendency of the Arminian presence.

My personal investigation of the theology and historical context does not yield the same judgment.

I view this confession as fundamentally loyal to the Calvinistic tradition, not a capitulation to any doctrine viewed as inconsistent with the historically expressed biblical faith of Baptists.

Informed by the historic purpose of a confession, it uses phrases and carefully constructed ideas always embedded in the Calvinistic doctrines that were omitted by the Primitives. At the same time, it corrects misrepresentation by the Arminians, and simplistic assaults by Finney.

In its 1853 rendition, the Confession consists of 18 articles. Each of these is carefully worded in light of the theological context within which they were written. It begins with a strong affirmation of the authority of Scripture as inspired and containing the famous statement “That it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter.” On the True God affirms a robust monotheism with an orthodox understanding of the Trinity,” that in the unity of the Godhead there are three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; equal in every divine perfection and executing distinct but harmonious offices in the great work of redemption.”

“On the Fall of Man,” it affirms, as Calvinists always have done, the voluntary nature of sin without diminishing the effects of the fall in universal condemnation and moral corruption. Man’s original moral character was holy and he was placed “under the law of his Maker.” He fell from that “holy and happy state” when he committed a “voluntary transgression.” Consequently, “all mankind are now sinners, not by constraint but choice” arising from a “nature utterly void of that holiness required by the law of God, positively inclined to evil; and therefore under just condemnation to eternal ruin, without defense or excuse.” This is hardly a capitulation to Arminianism.

The article on justification sets forth a clear rejection of works righteousness, and affirms the pardon of sin, the promise of eternal life “on principles of Righteousness.” This means “not in consideration of any works of righteousness which we have done, but solely through faith in the Redeemer’s blood.” By faith “his perfect righteousness is freely imputed to us of God” and believers are brought “into a state of most blessed peace and favor with God.” Included in that transaction are “every other blessing needful for time and eternity.”

The article on the “Freeness of Salvation” is aimed to show that Calvinists believe in universal offer based on universal duty, not necessarily universal provision. It shows that they are fully in accord with what the Primitives called “Fullerism.” Affirming that “the blessings of salvation are made free to all by the gospel” and “that it is the immediate duty of all to accept them by a cordial penitent, and obedient faith,” they attribute the failure to believe to the sinner’s “own inherent depravity and voluntary rejection of the gospel; which rejection involves him in an aggravated condemnation.”

Since such “inherent depravity” is at the root of all “voluntary rejection of the gospel, the article on “Grace in Regeneration” forms the bridge between unbelief and belief. The article clearly states a Calvinisic understanding of this doctrine while appropriating language that would catch the attention of both Arminians and Finneyites. Regeneration does not come on the basis of a prior disposition but establishes the necessary disposition of mind consistent with salvation. Regeneration is necessary for “regeneration consists in giving a holy disposition to the mind” and operates “above our comprehension by the power of the Holy Spirit, in connection with divine truth.” Its end is to “secure our voluntary obedience to the gospel.” The evidences of its presence are “the holy fruits of repentance and faith and newness of life.”

In order to solidify the historical view consistent with effectual calling and yet fully in tune with the theological tensions within which they operated, Brown constructed an article on repentance and faith: “We believe that Repentance and Faith are sacred duties, and also inseparable graces, wrought in our souls by the regenerating Spirit of God; whereby being deeply convinced of our guilt, danger, and helplessness, and of the way of salvation by Christ, we turn to God with unfeigned contrition, confession, and supplication for mercy; at the same time heartily receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as our Prophet, Priest and King, and relying on him alone as the only and all-sufficient Saviour.”

Repentance and faith are duties because they are commanded in Scripture in many passages (e.g Luke 3:3; Mark 1:15; Luke 24:46 47; Acts 2:38; Acts 11:18; Acts 17:30, Romans 1:5; Hebrews 4:2, 6, 11). Also, repentance implies the excellence and immutable perfection of the moral law against which we have sinned and to which all mankind must be subject. Faith implies the perfection of Christ as savior in meeting all the demands of the law both in its punitive requirement and in its righteousness flowing from holiness. None is exempt from embracing this moral perfection as the only way in which one may come before God. The hyper-Calvinist objection to duty faith was denied in the use of this word.

These graces are inseparable. As stated in the Baptist Catechism, “Repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of and endeavor after new obedience.” In addition, they are “wrought in our soul.” They are produced and shaped by a power outside of us, again reflecting the concepts of the “Baptist Catechism” that describes effectual calling “a work of God’s Spirit whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our will, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel.” God transforms, by the power in which he executes the entire scheme of salvation, the moral nature of man to remake his moral perceptions and preferences. Under the strength of this change, we sinners, as stated by the confession, are “deeply convinced of our guilt, danger, and helplessness, and of the way of salvation by Christ,” and so “turn to God with unfeigned contrition, confession, and supplication for mercy.” Because of the inseparability of these duties wrought by grace, the confession goes on to affirm, “At the same time heartily receiving the Lord Jesus Christ as our Prophet, priest, and king, and relying on him alone as the only and all-sufficient Saviour.”

As we will see in our next entry, all of this happens according to an eternal purpose, is conserved and manifest in the church, and is carried on infallibly into eternity.

ARTICLE 3

In the last entry, we saw how the New Hampshire Confession describes God’s operations of grace in the present so that our corruptions are overcome in his granting us salvation. This entry begins with the Confession’s statement on the location of these present operations in the divine purpose established in eternity.

The article entitled “Of God’s purpose of Grace” continues the robust affirmation of divine prerogative and power while also insisting on the immediate responsibility of man, or free agency, of man. The confession states, “We believe that election is the eternal purpose of God,” [not just his perfect foreknowledge of all things that will happen], “according to which he graciously regenerates, sanctifies, and saves sinners [God’s eternal purpose governs all the necessary operations by which he saves those he has elected], “that being perfectly consistent with the free agency of man, it comprehends all the means in connection with the end” [nothing about election obliterates man’s free agency but he maintains his status as a creature that is irreducibly a moral agent]. The article continues, calling election a “glorious display of God’s sovereign goodness, being infinitely free, wise, holy and unchangeable” [All of these words show how election reflects important aspects of the eternal attributes of God and cannot be altered from its eternal expression], “that it encourages the use of means in the highest degree” [election does not render means unnecessary but rather sets in motion those means that are necessary to accomplish the kind of salvation that God has decreed]. In accord with 2 Peter 1:10, the confession notes that election is “ascertained by its effects in all who truly believe the gospel [election is not a granting of salvation to those who have no heart for godliness or love for the wisdom of God as displayed in the gospel, but produces those fruits]. Given such connections between election and its evidences, it is “the foundation of Christian assurance” so that “to ascertain it with regard to ourselves demands and deserves the utmost diligence.” How any clear reading of this article could render the opinion that it presents to us a diminished Calvinism is puzzling.

The confession then presents sanctification as progressive, having begun in regeneration, and being carried on by the use of appointed means. Since its order is in anticipation of perseverance is it seen as a necessary constituent of that grace. Accordingly, the article on perseverance continues the clear separation from the Free Will confession. “We believe that such only are real believers as endure unto the end; that their persevering attachment to Christ is the grand mark which distinguishes them from mere professors; that a special Providence watches over their welfare; and that they are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” For those elected, regenerated, and kept there is no “danger of falling” but their status will result, not in a careless life, but a life of grateful obedience.

The special emphases of duty and grace fit perfectly in the content of the article “Of the Harmony of the Law and the Gospel.” Again, we see an emphasis both on moral inability, but on continuing responsibility because of the universal obligation to obey the moral law. This is a peculiarly Fullerite emphasis.. God’s law is the “eternal and unchangeable rule of his moral government” and is intrinsically “holy, just and good.” The sinner’s inability to keep it is not because of a loss of moral agency but specifically comes from “their love of sin.” Obedience to the moral law is one of the ends of salvation as well as the faithful use of the “means of grace connected with the establishment of the visible church.”

Further articles emphasize the doctrine of the church, the ordinances, the Sabbath, civil government, judgment, and heaven and hell. It affirms a regenerate church membership with two officers, pastors or bishops, and deacons. The confession affirms only two ordinances, baptism (“the immersion of a believer in water, in the name of the Father and Son, and Spirit”) and the Lord’s Supper (“to commemorate together the dying love of Christ, preceded always by solemn self-examination”), and asserts that baptism necessarily precedes the right to receive of the Lord’s Supper. Also, “The first day of the week is the Lord’s-Day, or Christian Sabbath to be kept sacred to religious purposes.” Civil government is ordained of God for order in human society, to be prayed for and obeyed except where laws violate the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. The confession affirms a “radical and essential difference between the righteous and the wicked.” Only those justified and sanctified in Christ are deemed righteous while all others are wicked in the sight of God. After the resurrection, the wicked will be assigned to endless punishment and the righteous to endless joy, all of this accomplished “on principles of righteousness.”

Though it does not have the quality of exposition found in the Second London Confession, The New Hampshire Confession is a noble confession, orthodox in its theology and Christology, uncompromised in its affirmation of the holy and wise sovereignty of God over his creation, the purely gratuitous character of salvation, clear in its baptistic understanding of the church, and firm in the reality of the eternal destinies of the righteous (esteemed so by the grace of God in the work of Christ) and the wicked, judged so by their continual transgression of the law and their wicked unbelief.

Disciple-Making Ministry in the Local Church

Posted on December 26, 2018 by John Samson

– Voddie Baucham

The Sufficiency of Scripture in the Disciple-Making Ministry of the Church and the Home – Voddie Baucham from NCFIC on Vimeo.

The Historical Birth of Jesus

Posted on December 25, 2018 by John Samson

Text: Luke 1:1-4; Phil 2:1-11

A Letter to the Inactive Member

Posted on December 23, 2018 by John Samson

Article by Kyle Borg (original source here)

I’m not certain but I suspect that if you asked a pastor what discourages him most, a common answer given would be the inactive member. By inactivity I don’t mean only those who are habitually absent, but also the member who merely warms a seat but does little to participate in the life, service, and especially the worship of the church. But it’s not only a great discouragement for a pastor (and congregation), it is also a good reason for concern. An inactive member is one of the sheep that has gone astray and requires the shepherd to leave the ninety-nine to go after the one.

As I thought about this, here’s what I’d like to say to the inactive member —:

Dear Friend,

I wanted to write you a letter of encouragement. I’ve noticed lately that you haven’t been as present in the life and worship of the congregation as you once were. I understand that there are many things in life that detract or hinder us from being as active as we should be, and maybe we just need a bit of a nudge in the right direction. In fact, it’s a temptation that the Bible encourages us against: “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. 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” (Hebrews 10:23-25). So with that in mind let me encourage you to not neglect the life, service, and worship of the church.

First, I want to encourage you because God is worthy. When we meet week-by-week to worship God we don’t do it because it’s tradition or mere formality. Rather, we do it because God is worthy to be worshiped: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:12). When we come together in worship — as God wants us to do — we are saying “You are worthy!” But when you don’t come to worship because you don’t feel like it, or you’re too busy, or you’d rather do something else, you are telling God “You’re not worthy.” God is worthy of being worshiped, loved, and served by you.

Second, I want to encourage you because the church is a body. Paul wrote: “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another” (Romans 12:4-5). By the Holy Spirit we’re not only united to Jesus but to one another. When you’re not participating in the life, service, and especially the worship of the church we feel your absence. We value you — your presence, service, gifts, and graces. To put it this way, when you’re not with us we’re not complete but we’re a body that is missing a part.

Third, I want to encourage you because of your spiritual growth. God doesn’t intend Christians to grow all by themselves. Rather, we are to grow together. Again, Paul wrote that we have the ministry of the church so that “we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). I’m afraid to say it, but it’s a biblical assumption that your inactivity means you’re not growing spiritually. You’re not growing in a love for God or for your neighbor; you’re not growing in your knowledge and understanding of the things of God. This isn’t a good place to be and we don’t want you to be there.

Fourth, I want to encourage you because of the wiles of Satan. Peter wrote: “Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). I don’t know a lot about the habits of lions, but I do know that they prey on those who are detached from the herd. I worry that in being inactive and not participating you’ve separated yourself from the herd and have become easy prey for Satan — his lies, flaming darts, and temptations. There’s a reason that just before this Peter wrote “Be alert.” We don’t want you to be resisting the devil all on your own, that’s why God has given you to us and us to you.

Fifth, I want to encourage you because of mutual edification. Even Paul who was an Apostle wanted and needed to be with the church. To the congregation in Rome he wrote: “For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you — that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:11-12). You’re a member of this church and you’re also a friend and family member in Jesus. We want to have opportunities to edify you and also to be edified by you.

Sixth, I want to encourage you because of joy. In writing to a church John said: “Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 1:12). Everyone wants to be happy, glad, and joyful. The Bible reminds us that we find joy in the face to face presence of one another. That is to say, you contribute to our joy when you are present and we contribute to yours.

Finally, let me encourage you because of the promises you made. When you became a member of this church you promised to throw your weight into this congregation — your devotion, service, influence, encouragement, and help. You and I know both know what it’s called when we’re not true to our word. Would you allow me to ask: were you being honest when you made that promise?

We all need encouragement from time to time to not quit but to keep with it. I hope you know that just as you need us, so we need you: “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.”

In Jesus,
Your Pastor

Effectual Grace

A blog by John Samson