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As I consider the upcoming year with its various challenges and opportunities there are many people, organizations, and issues in need of prayer. Reflecting on the full corpora of these needs, a common thread is discernable. Whether it is the lost, the ill, the nation, or the world, the solution to each of these maladies exists in Christ, and the manifestation of Christ in the world—his Church. Therefore, tracing the common thread, I feel compelled to pray especially for the Church. In particular, my prayer is that from top to bottom we would vibrantly reflect the reality of Christ’s kingdom.

Former President of Westminster Theological Seminary and author of several theological works, Edmund Clowney (1917 – 2005) expounded consistently the necessary role of the Church in the world today. In his book The Church, he begins by defining the Church from a biblical perspective, thereby countering prevailing misconceptions, and setting forth the great hope that is present for the people of God.

“To be sure, if the church rather than Christ becomes the centre of our devotion, spiritual decay has begun. A doctrine of the church that does not centre on Christ is self-defeating and false. But Jesus said to the disciples who confessed him, ‘I will build my church.’1 To ignore his purpose is to deny his lordship . . .

The very threats to the existence of the church in the twenty-first century show again our need of the church. The courage to stand apart, to be unashamed of Christ’s claims, is nurtured in the community of those who are baptized into his name. The church may not apply for a union card in a pluralistic establishment by signing away its right to proclaim the only Saviour of the world. Together we must make clear that it is to Christ and not to ourselves that we witness. In that witness we are not only individual points of light in the world, but a city set on a hill. In the ethnic hostility that ravages Europe, Africa and the Middle East, the church must show the bond of Christ’s love that unites former enemies as brothers and sisters in the Lord. Only so can the church be a sign of his kingdom: the kingdom that will come when Christ comes, and that is already present through his Spirit.”2

Footnotes

1 Matthew 16:18.

2 Edmund P. Clowney, The Church (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 15-16.

During this Christmas season, chances are you will watch Dickens’ seasonal classic A Christmas Carol. Many of us will observe old Ebenezer Scrooge with excited anticipation, knowing that the old miser eventually gets transformed. I wonder, however, if we ever identify some of Scrooge in ourselves?

John Calvin (1509 – 1564) in the following extract from his Institutes, dealing with the Eighth Commandment, shows that greed breaks this law, having at its root a discontentment with God’s distribution of possessions. In a world suffering from an insatiable appetite for more and more, Christians must give attention to this truth. Calvin writes:

“To sum up: we are forbidden to pant after the possessions of others, and consequently are commanded to strive faithfully to help every man to keep his own possessions.

We must consider that what every man possesses has not come to him by mere chance but by the distribution of the supreme Lord of all. For this reason, we cannot by evil devices deprive anyone of his possessions without fraudulently setting aside God’s dispensation . . .1

We will duly obey this commandment, then, if, content with our lot, we are zealous to make only honest and lawful gain; if we do not seek to become wealthy through injustice, nor attempt to deprive our neighbor of his goods to increase our own; if we do not strive to heap up riches cruelly wrung from the blood of others; if we do not madly scrape together from everywhere, by fair means or foul, whatever will feed our avarice or satisfy our prodigality. On the other hand, let this be our constant aim: faithfully to help all men by our counsel and aid to keep what is theirs, in so far as we can; but if we have to deal with faithless and deceitful men, let us be prepared to give up something of our own rather than to contend with them. And not this alone: but let us share the necessity of those whom we see pressed by the difficulty of affairs, assisting them in their need with our abundance.”2

Footnotes

1 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 408-409. In other translations see: Book 2, Chapter 8, Section 45. (2:8:45).

2 Ibid., 409-410. See: 2:8:46.

My friends Doug and Julie Reynolds are starting a classical school in the Wheaton area called the Clapham School (www.claphamschool.com). Listening to Doug’s vision, my wheels started turning about the role of education in the development of one’s faith.

For instance, Charity Schools were established in eighteenth-century England to teach poor children, and even adults. John Venn (1759 – 1813) and the Clapham group were ardent supporters of these schools. As Michael Hennell puts it in his biography of the able pastor, Venn considered education “as a preparatio evangelica . . . For the clergyman it will produce ‘a rising generation of young persons disposed to listen with a lively interest to his sermons, qualified by a stock of religious knowledge to understand them; prepared by good habits to attend regularly the ordinances of worship; accustomed to revere him as their guide and attached to him as their friend.’”1

In the following quotation from an article in the Christian Observer, Venn defends the importance of education as a plow to stir the fallow ground in preparation for the truth.

“Man is almost universally what he is trained up to be. Man, it is true, cannot by education be made a real Christian; but by education he may be freed from prejudices and delivered from the dominion of dispositions highly favourable to temptation and sin. He may, by education, be endued with qualities friendly to the growth of Christianity. His mind may be enlightened by knowledge instead of being darkened by brutish ignorance. His conscience may be awakened instead of being seared by insensibility. He may be made attentive, docile, submissive, rational; instead of being thoughtless, obstinate, intractable, void of understanding. The soil may be cultivated and prepared for the reception of the heavenly seed.”2

Footnotes

1 Here Hennell is quoting Venn himself. John Venn, “Charity Schools,” Christian Observer (September 1804); 542, quoted in Michael Hennell, John Venn and the Clapham Sect (London: Lutterworth Press, 1958), 137.

2 Ibid.

Roy Hattersley (1932 – ), former deputy leader of the U.K.’s Labour Party, was a member of Parliament from 1964 – 1997. A prolific writer, he has written fifteen books, including novels, and is a regular columnist for the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, having won the Granada Television award for the journalist of the year.

Despite writing books on John Wesley and the Salvation Army’s William and Catherine Booth,1 Hattersley remains a firm atheist. However, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, unable to accept the doctrinal claims or ethical implications of Christianity, he admitted that almost all groups engaged in disaster relief and alleviating human suffering were religious in both origin and nature. He writes:

“Notable by their absence are teams from rationalist societies, free thinkers’ clubs and atheists’ associations—the sort of people who not only scoff at religion’s intellectual absurdity but also regard it as a positive force for evil.

. . .Last week a middle-ranking officer of the Salvation Army, who gave up a well-paid job to devote his life to the poor, attempted to convince me that homosexuality is a mortal sin. Late at night, on the streets of one of our great cities, that man offers friendship as well as help to the most degraded and (to those of a censorious turn of mind) degenerate human beings who exist just outside the boundaries of our society. And he does what he believes to be his Christian duty without the slightest suggestion of disapproval. Yet, for much of his time, he is meeting needs that result from conduct he regards as intrinsically wicked.

Civilised people do not believe that drug addiction and male prostitution offend against divine ordinance. But those who do are the men and women most willing to change the fetid bandages, replace the sodden sleeping bags and—probably most difficult of all—argue, without a trace of impatience, that the time has come for some serious medical treatment. Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee of a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists. The correlation is so clear that it is impossible to doubt that faith and charity go hand in hand.

. . .It ought to be possible to live a Christian life without being a Christian or, better still, to take Christianity à la carte. . .Yet men and women who, like me, cannot accept the mysteries and the miracles do not go out with the Salvation Army at night.

The only possible conclusion is that faith comes with a packet of moral imperatives that, while they do not condition the attitude of all believers, influence enough of them to make them morally superior to atheists like me. The truth may make us free. But it has not made us as admirable as the average captain in the Salvation Army.”2

Footnotes

1 Blood and Fire: William and Catherine Booth and their Salvation Army (London: Time Warner Books, 2000).

2 Roy Hattersley, “Faith Does Breed Charity: We Atheists Have to Accept that Most Believers Are Better Human Beings,” The Guardian (U.K.), September 12, 2005.

One of the great legacies of the Reformed tradition is an emphasis on worldview thinking. Every area of life is to be brought under the lordship of Christ, and every legitimate discipline may be used as means of worshipping God with one’s heart, soul, mind, and strength.

In a recent volume, Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. (1946 – ), President of Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, reminds Christians that life-long learning is a spiritual vocation.

“Thoughtful Christians know that if they obey the Bible’s great commandment to love God with our whole mind, as well as with everything else, then we will study the splendor of God’s creation in the hope of grasping part of the ingenuity and grace that form it. One way to love God is to know and love God’s work. Learning is therefore a spiritual calling; properly done, it attaches us to God. In addition, the learned person has, so to speak, more to be Christian with. The person who studies chemistry, for example, can enter into God’s enthusiasm for the dynamic possibilities of material reality. The student who examines one of the great movements of history has moved into a position to praise the goodness of God, or to lament the mystery of evil, or to explore the places where these things intertwine. Further, from persistent study of history a student may develop good judgment, a feature of wisdom that helps us lead a faithful human life in the midst of a confusing world. And, of course, chemistry and history are only two examples from the wide menu of good things to learn.1″

Footnotes

1 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. Engaging God’s World: A Christian Vision of Faith, Learning, and Living (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2002), xi.