The Future of Evangelicalism – Patheos has invited a long list of people to submit an article about the future of evangelicalism. Some of them are really quite good. Be sure to check out the one by Justin Taylor, Collin Hansen and Kevin DeYoung.

A Shout Out to Moms – Jon Seger: “Any time someone asks me where my wife works or what she does, I usually preface my response with, ‘My wife’s got a much more difficult job than me.  She stays at home to raise & care for our son.’  Here’s why.” He then links to an advice column which gives a shout out to moms.

The Ruling Class – Nancy Pearcey writes about the ruling class and how they hold on to power. “Because secularism gives no basis for objective morality, secularists dismiss moral objections as mere private feelings and preferences. Then they tell opponents they have no right to apply their private preferences in the public square — whether in politics or business or education or healthcare.”

ESV Study Bible on Logos – The ESV Study Bible is soon coming to Logos. You can preorder now and save yourself a few dollars.

Online Communion – An article in the Telegraph talks about a minister who is doing communion by Twitter. Here’s the big disconnect in my mind. If community is virtual, if we can still have “communion” via digital media, how is it that we still require physical bread and wine? If we’re experiencing virtual communion, shouldn’t we also be eating and drinking virtual bread and wine?

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This morning I’ve got Whitefield and Wesley on my mind. This morning I was thinking about John Wesley’s infamous and divisive sermon called Free Grace and went looking for what I had written on it in the past. This was the sermon that began a significant rift between Whitefield and the Wesleys, for not only did it set them at theological odds, but it also betrayed Whitefield’s trust in Wesley. Though the men continued to love one other, this sermon was a very significant force in the eventual separation between them. Wesley’s sermon, though still highly regarded by some, is hardly a fair, biblical or thorough treatment of the subject of free will, free grace or predestination. It relies far more on shock, bold claims, and outrageous exaggerations than it does on Scripture.

One of Wesley’s biographers, Julia Wedgwood, was harsh but fair when considering this sermon. She says,

There is in it something of that provoking glibness with which young or half-cultivated people settle in a few sentences questions that have exercised the deepest minds ever since the dawn of speculation. Wesley was neither young nor uncultivated, but that incapacity for seeing difficulties which is characteristic of an early stage of culture, was a part of his nature.

In this sermon he does not once confront the difficulties which must be accepted by any one who, from his point of view, should reject predestination. He does not see that, if the design of Christ was to save all and the result is that He only saves some, His work was a failure. Indeed, it is evident on reading this sermon, that, of all the deep works which had been written on the subject, Wesley had never read one; he had taken it for granted that the opinion he set himself to confute could be held by none but fools, and his confutation was condemned to that futility by which all such arrogance is punished.

No doubt the sermon produced an effect, for it was preached with all his heart; but that effect, we may confidently assert, was not to shake one mind which had laid hold of the doctrine of election. But if this sermon is futile as an argument, the forcible rhetoric displayed in it goes some way to illustrate his influence as a preacher.

Wedgwood concludes that much of Wesley’s success should be attributed to his ability as a preacher rather than with the words he spoke. The way he spoke was often as important, or even more important, than the content of what he spoke. What he preached with all his heart was able to sway his listeners simply because of the force of his rhetoric. This stands as a warning to us that it is easy to be overpowered by a method in such a way that we lose sight of the message being conveyed. Haven’t we all found ourselves falling into this trap at one time or another?

I was drawn to the words “that provoking glibness with which young or half-cultivated people settle in a few sentences questions that have exercised the deepest minds ever since the dawn of speculation.” Since I began this web site I have often written about difficult subjects and have often been taken aback when, just hours after posting an article about free will or some other difficult topic, I get an email from a sixteen year old who really thinks he can solve two thousand years of disagreement with a single sentence. This is the glibness, the irrational confidence, that can come with youth. Of course I am not immune to this myself and this is especially so when it comes to doctrines where I have great confidence that what I believe is the biblical position. I find it bewlidering that a Christian could believe anything but the doctrines of grace. It makes no sense to me that Christians, who truly love the Lord, could deny some of His greatest characteristics and how they could, as Wesley did, say that if predestination is true, God is no better than the devil. The more I am convicted by Scripture the more I find that I cannot imagine how people can deny such important doctrines. But I know that this is also true for people who disagree with me.

I think this is one of the best arguments for reading church history and reading biographies of Christians of days past. When I read church history and read the biographies of great Christians I see how common it is for godly men to disagree on issues even as fundamental as predestination and free will. Having a perspective on these issues that is two thousand years wide is much more valuable than having a perspective that spans only a few years or a handful of books. Even when dealing with difficult issues, it is important that we display the kind of humility that Wesley forsook. We need to understand that greater Christians than ourselves wrestled with these issues and often came to differing conclusions, whether the topic is the doctrines of grace, the end times, the meaning and mode of baptism, and so on. We are so blinded by our sin and our corrupted powers of reasoning that we will never know the truth exhaustively. Studying the history of the church helps keep us grounded, showing that there is bound to be disagreement and hopefully showing how we can work together for the sake of Christ and his gospel despite such disagreement.

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As anyone knows who has studied the life of Jonathan Edwards, he dedicated a large portion of his ministry to thinking, writing and teaching about the freedom of the will. And, of course, he eventually published a classic work dealing with the subject. In writing the book he thought back to the days when revival had swept his church, his community and the area around it. And as he reflected on the individuals who had been swept up in the revival, or those who had made professions of faith in the years following, he became aware of a fundamental flaw in many of these professions. “Self-controlled individuals, as he had observed in his parishes for the past fifteen years, would acknowledge guilt for particular sins, but not guilt for their fundamentally rebellious hearts.”

Little has changed. I have met countless people who consider themselves Christians and who admit to sin in their lives and feel guilt and remorse for individual sins, but who seem unable or unwilling to admit the incontrovertible fact that their hearts are in rebellion against God. The Bible tells us in plain terms that we are not sinners because we sin, but we sin because we are sinners. And I don’t think we can overstate what a fundamental difference this is! We do not need to seek forgiveness merely for the sins we commit, but for our fundamentally evil and rebellious hearts—hearts that, in their natural state, hate God and are fully and completely and gleefully and willingly opposed to Him.

In his oh-so-good biography of Edwards, George Marsden summarizes Edwards’ assessment of this problem. “Guided by conscience, they saw particular sins as failures of will power, which might be overcome by exercising greater self-control.” When sin has been defined merely as individual acts of the will, it is possible for humans, even devoid of God’s help, to overcome those evil acts and deeds. An unbelieving man who explodes in anger or a woman who grumbles against her husband can overcome those sins in their own power. Unbelievers can throw off addiction and poor behavior through an act of the will. But they can never address the heart of the issue. While they may make cosmetic changes, they can never overcome the deeper issues because they can never change their hearts.

Those who profess Christ can do the same thing; Christians are also capable of overcoming the appearance of sin and the outward manifestations of sin in their own power. When you sell your house, you almost always spend a few dollars and quite a few hours painting the house; a fresh coat of paint can do wonders in “cleaning up” a house. But it is merely a cosmetic change. Underlying issues, structural issues, can be masked for a time, but will show up again if they are not properly dealt with (as anyone knows who has had mould lurking behind those coats of paint). Similarly, Christians can dedicate great effort and go to great pains to remove traces of sin from their lives. But all the time they may have done this without the aid and assistance of the Holy Spirit. They may never have owned up to their fundamental sinfulness, their natural enmity towards God. They may never feel or acknowledge guilt not only for what they do but for who they are.

The evidence proves that many Christians, and most likely the vast majority of those who identify themselves as Christians in the world today, have a worldview that is functionally secular. Many people who go to church every Sunday, who read Christian books and who read their Bibles and pray every day, still think like unbelievers. Their worldview—their way of seeing and understanding the world—is no different from before they claimed to be Christians. Jonathan Edwards, looking to the refusal of the people of his day to own up to their guilt, realized that “the liberal Christianity of the new republic would be built around such moral principles.” Modern day evangelicalism is likewise founded on such lax moral principles.

A couple of years ago I spoke to the administrator of a church in the area. This person had been a Christian for several years and was active as a leader in the church. Discussing a recent and high-profile crime that had been covered by the media, this person told me, “I just don’t understand how anyone could do that. I don’t understand how anyone could be that bad. I could never be that evil!” As we spoke, I realized that this was a person who knew that he committed sins, and yet one who clearly did not understand his inherently sinful nature. He knew he sinned but refused to believe he was a sinner. Sin is what he did, not what he was. Recently my thoughts turned to a couple we know who seemed to become believers, but whose lives did not seem to show much evidence of true life change. They were quickly drafted into service in their church and were soon actively involved in leadership and service. They were baptized despite highly-visible and unrepentant sin in their lives (living together despite being unmarried). They became members. And yet their lives, including this one very obviously and blatantly sinful aspect of their lives, did not change at all. Neither did the church seem to require or expect them to change. They modified aspects of their lives, I suppose, but that fundamental change of heart just never seemed to happen. As of the last time we saw them, they still did not seem to think, act, talk and, in many ways, live like Christians. They knew they sinned but didn’t seem to know that they were and still are sinners.

Here is how Marsden concludes this short section of the book:

Even the most popular evangelicalism of the next two centuries tended to emphasize guilt for and victory over known sins. Although the submission of one’s will to God and a subsequent infilling or baptism of the Holy Spirit typically would be urged as necessary to achieve moral purity, God’s power was most often seen as cooperating with or working through the native powers of the sovereign individual will. While American Christianity in general and evangelicalism in particular came in too many varieties to allow easy generalization, we can at least say that Edwards was correct in identifying a trend toward what he called “Arminianism” in what would become “the land of the free.”

The foundational problem that led to this low view of sin and God’s expectation of holiness was a wrong view of the freedom of the will. People did not realize that the will is wholly bound by the sinful nature. They felt that they were able, in their own power and through their own freedom, to change their behavior. They did not understand or care to understand the depth of their depravity. They may have sought God’s assistance in doing this, but did not rely on His grace and power. God merely cooperated with man’s inherent ability. And sadly, even centuries later, little has changed across a large spectrum of Christianity. Take a book from the shelf of your local Christian bookstore and you should not be surprised to read that your fundamental problem is not your sinful nature but your individual self-destructive acts; not your sinfulness but your sin.

The solution today is the same as it was in Edwards’ day. “People needed to be properly convinced of their real guilt and sinfulness, in the sight of God, and their deserving of his wrath.” Every Christian needs not only to own up to his sinful acts, but to admit that he is fundamentally a sinner who is deserving of God’s wrath. No one has properly apprehended God’s grace until he has understood his own sinfulness and knows that he fully deserves God’s just and holy punishment. The evangelical church of our day tends to be a wrathless church—a church that speaks often of God’s love and grace, but rarely of the deepest necessity of this love and grace. The church today needs an infusion of the gospel, the whole gospel, which speaks not only of God’s love, but first of our desperate need of reconciliation. The gospel portrays us as we really are—as sinners who sin because of our fundamental guilt, our deep-rooted hatred of God. Only when we see ourselves as sinners can we truly see Christ as Savior. Only when we have identified ourselves as fallen in Adam can we truly and properly identify ourselves as raised up and set apart in Christ.

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