A Just Cause

One of the things we continually need to remember is that our faith is about more than just having our sins forgiven and living right. As Christians, our faith in Christ should not be compartmentalized. Instead, it should flow into or affect every area of our lives, when we are at home, at work, at school, when we're watching the news or thinking about social issues such as abortion, homelessness and prostitution.

This is why agencies such as International Justice Mission are so important, because they help shine the light on global issues such as victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery and oppression. But don't let their name fool you into thinking that these are things we as Canadians do not deal with. Rather these are very much issues that hit close to home as this article from Canadian Christianity reveals. Here is part of what it says.

When Vancouverite Donald Bakker pleaded guilty to 10 counts of sexual assault - seven of them under Canada's hitherto untested sex tourism law - much of the credit was due to a heroic group of Christian undercover investigators, who secretly tracked down his under aged victims and videotaped the Cambodian brothels where Bakker committed his assaults. But British Columbian men don't have to fly to Indochina for sex. A huge criminal enterprise has enveloped the globe, designed to deliver women and children to the customer's door. Most are illegal immigrants duped with the promise of jobs as restaurant workers, janitors or maids. The RCMP estimates 600 women and children are brought into Canada yearly, mostly to slake the sexual appetites of Canadian men; while 1,500 more are brought through Canada to the United States.

This is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg, the world we live in is filled with similar stories of injustice and abuse. The question is, how does one get involved? What is our church doing about it? Where do we, as individuals, start in this fight for justice? Well, to begin with, we can start by becoming informed. This Saturday night (May 31, 2008 @ 7:30pm) McKernan Baptist church is hosting an evening with Canadian IJM president Jamie McIntosh and Canadian recording artist Caroline Arends, to get tickets or to find out more about it click here.

Justice is close to the heart of God. The work of IJM gives the hope of justice to those who have been wrongfully imprisoned and detained. I applaud their work on behalf of the innocent.

- Charles W. Colson, Chairman of the Board, Prison Fellowship Ministries

Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

Psalm 82:3-4 (ESV)

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What is Reformed?

There are, as I'm sure you know, many different types of churches and, for that matter, individual Christians throughout the world today. For example, there are those that are Catholic and Protestant, liberal or conservative, traditional or contemporary, charismatic, emergent and, of course, the much maligned fundamentalists, who seem to be less about the "fun" and more about the "mental", just kidding. In any case, each of these are defined, for the most part, by their theology or system of beliefs.

What then does it mean when a church or an individual Christian, like myself, is described as being "reformed". Reformed from what? If you are interested in reading a clear yet concise summary of reformed theology, I would direct your attention to either B.B. Warfield's classic essay here or for something much more recent, to Tim Challies web page here. If watching a short two minute video clip on the subject is more your thing, then here is an excellent answer to this question of what it means to be reformed from Dr. Ligon Duncan of Reformed Theological Seminary.




Ephesians 2:4-5 (ESV)

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved.

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Expelling Worldliness with a New Affection

This past Sunday we looked at John 17:6-19 and the challenge of being in the world but not of the world. This, of course, begins by having the natural love that we have for the world replaced with a new love that is centered on God. Sinclair Ferguson has written an excellent article about this that I want to share with you.

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was one of the most remarkable men of his time—a mathematician, evangelical theologian, economist, ecclesiastical, political, and social reformer all in one. His most famous sermon was published under the unlikely title: “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” In it he expounded an insight of permanent importance for Christian living: you cannot destroy love for the world merely by showing its emptiness. Even if we could do so, that would lead only to despair. The first world–centered love of our hearts can be expelled only by a new love and affection—for God and from God. The love of the world and the love of the Father cannot dwell together in the same heart. But the love of the world can be driven out only by the love of the Father. Hence Chalmers’ sermon title.

True Christian living, holy and right living, requires a new affection for the Father as its dynamic. Such new affection is part of what William Cowper called “the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord”—a love for the holy that seems to deal our carnal affections a deadly blow at the beginning of the Christian life. Soon, however, we discover that for all that we have died to sin in Christ, sin has by no means died in us. Sometimes its continued influence surprises us, even appears to overwhelm us in one or other of its manifestations. We discover that our “new affections” for spiritual things must be renewed constantly throughout the whole of our pilgrimage. If we lose the first love we will find ourselves in serious spiritual peril.

Sometimes we make the mistake of substituting other things for it. Favorites here are activity and learning. We become active in the service of God ecclesiastically (we gain the positions once held by those we admired and we measure our spiritual growth in terms of position achieved); we become active evangelistically and in the process measure spiritual strength in terms of increasing influence; or we become active socially, in moral and political campaigning, and measure growth in terms of involvement. Alternatively, we recognize the intellectual fascination and challenge of the gospel and devote ourselves to understanding it, perhaps for its own sake, perhaps to communicate it to others. We measure our spiritual vitality in terms of understanding, or in terms of the influence it gives us over others. But no position, influence, or evolvement can expel love for the world from our hearts. Indeed, they may be expressions of that very love.

Others of us make the mistake of substituting the rules of piety for loving affection for the Father: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!” Such disciplines have an air of sanctity about them, but in fact they have no power to restrain the love of the world. The root of the matter is not on my table, or in my neighborhood, but in my heart. Worldliness has still not been expelled.

It is all too possible, in these different ways, to have the form of genuine godliness (how subtle our hearts are!) without its power. Love for the world will not have been expunged, but merely diverted. Only a new love is adequate to expel the old one. Only love for Christ, with all that it implies, can squeeze out the love of this world. Only those who long for Christ’s appearing will be delivered from Demas-like desertion caused by being in love with this world.

How can we recover the new affection for Christ and his kingdom that so powerfully impacted our life-long worldliness, and in which we crucified the flesh with its lusts?

What was it that created that first love in any case? Do you remember? It was our discovery of Christ’s grace in the realization of our own sin. We are not naturally capable of loving God for himself, indeed we hate him. But in discovering this about ourselves, and in learning of the Lord’s supernatural love for us, love for the Father was born. Forgiven much, we loved much. We rejoiced in the hope of glory, in suffering, even in God himself. This new affection seemed first to overtake our worldliness, then to master it. Spiritual realities—Christ, grace, Scripture, prayer, fellowship, service, living for the glory of God—filled our vision and seemed so large, so desirable that other things by comparison seemed to shrink in size and become bland to the taste.

The way in which we maintain “the expulsive power of a new affection” is the same as the way we first discovered it. Only when grace is still “amazing” to us does it retain its power in us. Only as we retain a sense of our own profound sinfulness can we retain a sense of the graciousness of grace.

Many of us share Cowper’s sad questions: “Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and his word?” Let us remember the height from which we have fallen, repent and return to those first works. It would be sad if the deepest analysis of our Christianity was that it lacked a sense of sin and of grace. That would suggest that we knew little if the expulsive power of a new affection. But there is no right living that last without it.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. - 1 John 2:15 (ESV)
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Science vs. Religion

Are science and religion compatible? Does believing in the one necessarily exclude any faith in the other? Recent developments in the writings of some new atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens would seem to suggest this. As would the traditional thinking of what we call fundamentalist bible believing Christians throughout the ages. But as Arthur F. Holmes rightly suggested, all truth is God's truth, and this includes science.

Since Darwin wrote his now infamous "Origin of Species" back in 1859, Christians have been debating about how to reconcile or refute his theory with what is revealed in the first two chapters of Genesis. On an academic level, this theory has been all but canonized with any questioning voices being either shunned or ridiculed. Recently a film has been made exploring this tension in our schools called Expelled. I have not seen it myself, as it has not yet been released in Canada, but from the trailers it certainly looks very thought provoking.

But what about Genesis 1 & 2? How can we, or can we reconcile what we read there with what we observe in science? Was the earth created in six 24 hour days? Or did God use evolution as a means of bringing about His creation? Personally I believe in what is known as the mature creation view. Here is how Vern Poythress explains it in his book "Redeeming Science" which is available online for free.

I suggest that the mature creation view offers an attractive supplement to the 24-hour-day view. It retains all the main advantages of the 24-hour-day view, by maintaining that God created the universe within six 24-hour days. It supplements this view with a clear and simple explanation for the conclusions of modern astronomy. The universe appears to be 14 billion years old because God created it mature. Moreover, the universe is coherently mature, in the sense that estimates of age deriving from different methods arrive at similar results. This coherence makes some sense. God created Adam mature. Why should we not think that Adam was coherently mature? It seems a little monstrous to think that Adam might have a heart that tested as twenty years old, and a hand with wrinkles that made it look a hundred years old.

But now the same approach can apply to geology. If rocks look millions of years old according to rubidium-strontium dating, we can say that they appear mature. Perhaps the whole geological structure of the earth is coherently mature. When fossils lie in older strata, the associated age is coherent apparent age. But then the fossils do not represent the remains of animals or plants that were actually alive millions of years ago. They represent a coherent mature structure that shows how God would have worked, millions of years ago, if he had started back then creating and extinguishing various kinds of animals over long periods of time. If we believe in the mature creation view, we can believe that such creation is utterly consistent and coherent. Of course, God as the sovereign has the right to leave inconsistent signs of age and of youth. But he also has the right to make the world coherent, and in some respects the coherence makes more sense. If one is going to produce some creatures in mature state, like Adam, why not do the whole thing the same way?

As Christians we do not have the liberty of separating our faith from things like science, business, or the environment. We need to think biblically about this world we live in. We need to remember that all truth is God's truth.

God's invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. - Romans 1:20

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