The essence of the Christian religion consists in the reality that the creation of the Father, ruined by sin, is restored in the death of the Son of God, and re-created by the grace of the Spirit into a kingdom of God (112).
That is one seriously loaded statement. But it lays down the sort of holistic understanding of Christianity that we so desperately need.
Of the things I have never understood, these are included – why church attendance rises so much at Christmas, and why so many recording artists produce Christmas albums during their career. The only conclusion I can draw is that they must not think about the words they are singing when they sing the traditional hymns of this season.
The church has many great hymns that proclaim the wonderful truths of the Christian faith, but I find that many of our Advent and Christmas hymns make those declarations in an especially poignant way. I was thinking about this yesterday evening during our carol service, looking at the many unfamiliar faces gathered in the church. Why were they there? And why did they so readily sing these songs, even with exuberance?
If people took a moment to think about the lyrics of the Advent and Christmas hymns, I wonder how they would react to something like the third verse of 'Hark! The Herald Angels Sing':
Hail the heav'n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness! Light and life to all He brings, Ris'n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die, Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth.
Many of these songs are joyful expressions of the wonder of the incarnation. Other songs boldly present a challenge to those who have not confessed Christ as Lord, and demand a response. Consider this verse, from 'Joy to the World':
He rules the world with truth and grace, And makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness, And wonders of His love.
Yea, Lord, we greet Thee, Born this happy morning, Jesus, to Thee be all glory giv'n!
In November of last year, Al Wolters wrote an excellent article for the online version of Comment magazine, making a similar point about the 'Hallelujah Chorus' in Handel'sMessiah. He notes that despite the overtly religious theme – that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and that his Kingdom rules over all the earth – people in our culture still stand up when the choir sings the majestic chorus. What makes this especially interesting is the juxtaposition of the confession of Christ as Lord, ruling over all the earth, with Psalm 2, which is sung prior to the chorus. Wolters observes,
The meaning is unmistakable. The nations at large conspire against the Lord and against his Anointed, and plan to cast off all restraints that he has imposed on them. But God will only laugh at their defiance, and he (now addressed in the second person) will crush their rebellion and smash them like a piece of pottery. Then the "Hallelujah," with its celebration of the universal triumph of God in Jesus Christ, is sung. And audiences across several continents get to their feet in symbolic endorsement.
What do we make of this? It may be surprising that people who don't consider themselves Christians continue to sing these songs (or even celebrate Christmas, for that matter), but old cultural mores die hard, and that these songs remain so widely known owes to the vestiges of a culture in which Christianity once had a more prominent place.
Still, how can so many people sing the words of these songs and not be taken aback by the startling claims they make? One reason, perhaps, is their familiarity. Repetition serves as an aid to remembering something and implanting it in our mind, but too much repetition can sometimes dull the effect of the thing to be remembered. We hear these songs played over and over again at this time of year, and it may just be that the oft-repeated choruses no longer hit us with the full force of their declarations. More, the power of the message of the church's Advent and Christmas hymns is diluted further when mixed in with the many trivial and meaningless seasonal songs that have been produced over the years, such as the patently ridiculous 'Here Comes Santa Claus.'
Unfortunately, many of those who sing these songs during this season will likely not be in a place where the songs are accompanied by a faithful proclamation of the gospel, underscoring and heralding the powerful truths the hymn-writers penned, challenging the listeners to surrender their lives to the newborn King they sing of. The sad reality is that many of the churches that see a swelling of attendance during the holidays are no longer known for their orthodoxy, and so the bold hymns of Christmas just become happy carols to sing by candlelight.
That being said, it really is quite significant that during this season, even in our day, people will repeatedly hear songs proclaiming that Jesus is Lord broadcast over the airwaves or in their neighbourhoods or in churches all across our towns and cities. Let us hope and pray that as they hear and sing these songs and find themselves confronted with the truth of the gospel, that they would be captivated by the wonder and the promise of the incarnation, and fall on their knees in worship before the Lord of heaven and earth.
A few weeks ago, I preached on the parable of the sower from Mark 4, and the week following one of our other ministers, Lee, preached on the parables of the growing seed and the mustard seed. Shortly afterward, I found the video below, which I thought really brought to light some of the things we had said in our sermons, especially emphasizing that when we sow the seed, we just never know where or how it is going to grow. But we have confidence in knowing that God, by the power of the Spirit, will cause it to grow when and in whom he pleases.
We showed it in our evening service last night as a way of encouraging our congregation to be eager to take up the task of proclaiming the Gospel. We wanted them to have that same confidence that when they tell of the good news of the Kingdom of God, it will produce fruit, often even beyond what they could imagine.
This is just so encouraging and uplifting. It is absolutely amazing the way that God works in people's lives.
In his book, Gospel and Kingdom, which is one of the volumes in the very helpful Goldsworthy Trilogy, the Australian biblical theologian, Graeme Goldsworthy, discusses how the understanding that the Old Testament forms an integral part of the history of redemption has been lost in our day. We have moved towards focusing on the individual and his or her personal appropriation of faith instead of first recognising the work of God in history as part of a much larger story and framework. He writes,
Failure to grasp this truth – largely because the proper study of the Old Testament has been neglected, has aided and abetted one of the most unfortunate reversals in evangelical theology. The core of the gospel, the historical facts of what God did in Christ, is often down-graded today in favour of a more mystical emphasis on the private spiritual experience of the individual. Whereas faith in the gospel is essentially acceptance of, and commitment to, the declaration that God acted in Christ some two thousand years ago on our behalf, saving faith is often portrayed nowadays more as trust in what God is doing in us now. Biblical ideas such as 'the forgiveness of sins' or 'salvation' are interpreted as primarily describing a Christian's personal experience. But when we allow the whole Bible – Old and New Testaments – to speak to us, we find that those subjective aspects of the Christian life which are undoubtedly important – the new birth, faith and sanctification – are fruits of the gospel. This gospel, while still relating to individual people at their point of need, is rooted and grounded in the history of redemption. It is the good news about Jesus, before it can become good news for sinful men and women. Indeed, it is only as the objective (redemptive-historical) facts are grasped that the subjective experience of the individual Christian can be understood (20-21).
Without the redemptive work of God in history through Jesus, we have no hope. This work of God is the starting point of faith.
Matthew Mason, one of the regular contributors to the blog of the The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology, wrote in a post some time ago of the growing trend in evangelical circles to speak of 'repenting of our righteousness'. Mason points out that proponents of this perspective argue 'that the gospel is the beginning and end of of the Christian life, that all our problems come from a lack of orientation to the gospel...[and] that Christians should speak like this of our present attempts to obey God.'
The basic point they wish to make is sound – your understanding of salvation must be rooted in the gospel, along with the recognition that you can do nothing of your own to earn or merit salvation. Agreed. But the argument then extends further to include the idea that you grow as a Christian by increasing your belief in the gospel, or trusting more in the gospel, and so on. Well, to a degree, that is also true. This is emphasized so strongly, however, that any discussion of good works leads to a warning to be careful you're not trusting in your works for salvation.
So what is the place of righteousness, then? And what of the Bible's call to pursue righteousness and holiness? C.S. Lewis, in the second chapter on faith in Mere Christianity, writes,
The sense in which a Christian leaves it to God is that he puts all his trust in Christ: trusts that Christ will somehow share with him the perfect human obedience which He carried out from His birth to His crucifixion: that Christ will make the man more like Himself and, in a sense, make good his deficiencies. In Christian language, He will share His 'sonship' with us, will make us, like Himself, 'Sons of God'... In a sense, the whole Christian life consists in accepting that very remarkable offer. But the difficulty is to reach the point of recognising that all we have done and can do is nothing... And, in yet another sense, handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says... If you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already.
Any attempt to earn your righteousness in salvation is to be avoided, certainly. But it is hard to understand how you grow as a disciple of Christ if you are not pursuing righteousness in response to the good news of the gospel. Our homegroups at church have just begun a series on Romans 12-16. It is particularly noteworthy that after discussing the gospel message in the first eleven chapters, Paul then goes on to lay out some pretty in-depth applications of that gospel and how it should shape our lives as Christians. Those last chapters of Romans show us that you must indeed make the gospel the centre of your life as a Christian, but that you do so by actively pursuing righteousness. And it is not just here in Romans; the Bible speaks repeatedly of the call to live righteous lives. Think of the Psalms, or the book of James.
The Heidelberg Catechism says two important things about this. First, in Q&A 86, it asks why we must still do good when we have been delivered from our misery by God's grace. The response:
We do good because Christ by his Spirit is renewing us to be like himself, so that in all our living we may show that we are thankful to God for all he has done for us, and so that he may be praised through us. And we do good so that we may be assured of our faith by its fruits, and so that by our godly living our neighbours may be won over to Christ.
It is striking here to note that God is praised through our righteous living. Those who call us to 'repent of our righteousness' would likely find these words hard to stomach. But perhaps it is even more striking, then, that assurance of our faith is linked with the practice of righteousness. And secondly, the Catechism indicates that genuine repentence and conversion has two parts: the dying-away of the old self, and the coming-to-life of the new. In describing the coming-to-life of the new, the Catechism tells us that this is marked by 'wholehearted joy in God through Christ and a delight to do every kind of good as God wants us to' (Q&A 90).
Belief in the gospel motivates you to act in accordance with it. That action is not an attempt to justify yourself, but an expression of your gratitude for God's grace and your acknowledgement of his rule as Lord and King of heaven and earth. You don't repent of your righteousness, because God calls us to righteousness.
Belief in the gospel and the pursuit of righteousness are not contradictory. To be sure, the latter does not precede the former. But the latter must flow out of the former.
[and] that Christians should speak like this of our present attempts to obey God.'