Phil Johnson on “The Piper-Warren Connection”

So (in case you hadn’t heard) Rick Warren will headline the list of speakers at next October’s Desiring God Conference. Of course I think it’s a bad turn of events, and I didn’t find Dr. Piper’s rationale for handing his platform over to Warren satisfying at all. I was surprised when I heard about it, but on second thought, I have to admit that it is consistent with Dr. Piper’s modus operandi. Last year some people were appalled, others delighted, when Doug Wilson spoke at the conference. The year before that, the blogosphere was all abuzz with strong passions for months because Mark Driscoll would be the featured speaker. In 2007, it was John MacArthur, who (let’s face it) is hardly a John Piper clone.

So Piper likes to feature speakers from outside the boundaries of his own circle of close fellowship, and that’s a good thing, within limits. But Piper’s choice of Warren as a keynote speaker proves his idea of where those limits lie is vastly—perhaps fundamentally—different from mine.

Furthermore, as much as I differ from Piper on the question of who deserves his imprimatur, there’s at least an equal measure of difference between what I think is the proper way to respond to Piper and the way some of his most vocal critics have responded. I’m appalled and ashamed at how some on my side of this debate have expressed their disagreement with Dr. Piper.

It seems to me the whole controversy reflects in microcosm why the evangelical and fundamentalist movements of the 20th century have both failed so egregiously.

Let me explain why. Here are some observations about John Piper, Rick Warren, the critics, and the biblical duty of separation—separation both from false teachers (Romans 16:17; 1 Corinthians 16:22; Galatians 1:8-9; 2 John 7-11), and from deliberately, incorrigibly disobedient brethren (2 Thessalonians 3:14-15; 1 Corinthians 5:11).

John Piper
I love John Piper. People often ask me what living preachers I listen to besides John MacArthur. John Piper is my clear first choice. He’s also one of my favorite authors. The Justification of God: An Exegetical and Theological Study of Romans 9:1-23 was the first John Piper work I ever read, and I was hooked. His chapter in Still Sovereign by Thomas Schreiner and Bruce Ware is worth the price of the whole book. The chapter is titled “Are There Two Wills in God?” and if more Calvinists would read that chapter and digest its contents, it would settle most of the interminable debates about the optative language Scripture uses to speak of God’s “desire” for the repentance of reprobate people. I have written elsewhere about how deeply I appreciate Piper’s The Future of Justification. His Don’t Waste Your Life is as profound as it is brief and pithy. I’ve never read any book by Piper that I would give a negative review to. I’ve never listened to a sermon by him without being impacted by the power of truth.

Furthermore, I greatly respect and appreciate Dr. Piper for his courage and persistence as a defender of the faith against Open Theism, not to mention his diligent defense of biblical authority against the juggernaut of egalitarianism. He’s one of the most bold and large-hearted preachers alive today. For those and many other reasons, my appreciation of Dr. Piper runs deep.

Obviously, though, I disagree with him on some fairly important issues, mostly related to his belief that the charismatic gifts are still fully operative. It is this facet of Dr. Piper’s theology, I think, that makes his judgments often seem subjective—even arbitrary. Consider, for example, his fascination with “holy laughter” at the height of the Toronto Blessing—and his persistent reluctance to condemn that movement despite the vast damage it was causing. (Did he ever actually denounce the Toronto phenomenon? I didn’t hear about it if he did.) That is just one example of what I would regard as a glaring lack of discernment in some of his judgments.

Holy passion and sacred delight in God are wonderful virtues, of course, and these constitute the centerpiece of Dr. Piper’s message. But true delight in God is the polar opposite of hedonism, and copious passion per se is not necessarily righteous. (Nor is a quiet or restrained expression of one’s feelings a sign of indifference.) As a matter of fact, ungodly passions are a massive problem in the church today, especially in the charismatic fringe. I wish Dr. Piper were more vocal in warning against that kind of imbalance.

Furthermore, human passion and biblical discernment can be like oil and water—a truth Dr. Piper acknowledges in principle. Unbridled passion and feelings-based judgments are deadly to discernment. Hang onto that thought, because it will come up again later in this post. It’s a principle that works both ways.

Rick Warren
I can’t think of anyone who would make a finer poster-boy for the pragmatic, spiritually impoverished, gospel-deprived message of modern and postmodern evangelicalism than Rick Warren. He is shallow, pragmatic, and chameleonic. He is a spiritual changeling who will say whatever his audience wants to hear. He wants desperately to be liked and accepted by Muslims, evangelicals, and everyone in between. The length to which he will go to indulge his ecumenical bent is seen in the fact that he was one of a handful of professing evangelicals who signed “A Common Word Between Us and You,” a declaration of spiritual accord between Muslims and Christians. His church’s Easter service at Angel Stadium last week was headlined by the Jonas Brothers (who sang a love song from a Disney movie as if it were a song of praise to God). And Warren’s sermon on the resurrection was a paean to Possibility Thinking—assuring people that God wanted to do a miracle to revive their broken dreams. That, Warren said, is the meaning of the resurrection. (And, “Remember, God isn’t mad at you, He’s mad about you.”)

Warren has squandered too many opportunities to proclaim the gospel accurately and muffed too many questions on national television to be given a platform by one of the leading figures of Together for the Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and similar movements whose central goal, after all, is to undo the damage Warren’s philosophy has caused in the evangelical movement.

The massive problems with Warren’s ministry philosophy are well documented. The same with his practice of softening, omitting, or denying key gospel truths about sin, judgment, the wrath of God, and the necessity of repentance. A preacher doesn’t have to affirm heresy or overtly deny truth in order to be dangerous. It is entirely possible by one’s behavior to distort or obscure the gospel message. All Peter did to earn a public rebuke from Paul was change seats at the dinner table (Galatians 2:11-14). But in context, that seriously compromised the gospel. Deliberately and repeatedly giving short shrift to the greatest truths of the gospel is at least as serious an error as Peter’s hypocrisy.

Warren’s private reassurances to John Piper shouldn’t trump the fact that he does not actually preach the gospel plainly, boldly, thoroughly, unashamedly, and in a way that is faithful to the Word of God. If he privately believes something other than what he has said in his books and sermons, that makes him more culpable as a hypocrite. His belief is better than his practice? Let’s not make that sound heroic.

On one level I share Dr. Piper’s curiosity. I’d love to hear Rick Warren explain how someone who believes what he professes to believe could possibly justify the pragmatic philosophy of ministry he has been championing for thirty years. But that’s something I’d prefer to hear in private. I would never give such a man a platform at a national conference, in front of thousands of impressionable disciples, to make an apologia for his pragmatic ministry philosophy or his truncated gospel.

In fact, it pains me deeply to see Dr. Piper himself making such an apologia for Warren, assuring viewers (without any substantiation other than their private conversation) that Warren is “deeply theological,” and “at root . . . doctrinal and sound.” Jesus said, “Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit” (Matthew 12:33). That’s fitting advice for a situation like this.

No matter how Dr. Piper may qualify his endorsement of Rick Warren (and he didn’t seem to be qualifying it very much in the live Q&A the other night), many of Dr. Piper’s admirers do assume Warren now has Piper’s full imprimatur. Some of the dialogue in various online forums and social-networking sites demonstrates that.

The critics

Speaking of Twitter chatter and Facebook feedback, I can’t touch on this whole subject without pointing out that the tone of some of the criticism leveled at Dr. Piper is simply revolting. Within fifteen minutes of Dr. Piper’s live webcast the other night, I had to delete a comment on my Facebook page from a woman who called him a clown. Over the past week I have deleted an average of two or three comments each day that were personally insulting or deliberately disrespectful toward Dr. Piper. One woman expressed a hope that his sabbatical would be permanent.

It intrigues and disturbs me that most (not all, but most) of the overtly impertinent comments have come from women. There’s evidently a growing regiment of self-appointed discernment experts consisting of women who give lip service to the authority of Scripture. They would unanimously affirm that Scripture reserves for men the teaching and ruling elders’ roles in the church. They would, I presume, deplore the ordination of women to such positions of authority. They are not offended by Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 2:12; rather, they would say amen to it. And yet in practice they have no compunction about posting angry, loud condemnations and insistent demands for the removal of a pastor of John Piper’s stature. These things ought not to be.

Anyway, I remarked on the radio this week that I think a lot of Dr. Piper’s critics have been too shrill, too hysterical, too trigger-happy, too eager for immediate reprisals, and too disrespectful to Dr. Piper. The reactions to that comment have been chilling. I wonder if some of Dr. Piper’s critics would have been happier if I had called for his deportation to Siberia. One blog (wholly written, evidently, on a keyboard with a defective shift key) labeled my position “LUKEWARM,” claiming I was trying to stay “SAFELY IN THE MIDDLE AS TO NOT ISSUE ANY DECISION WHATEVER.” A woman who relentlessly tried to pick a fight with me on my Facebook page finally took her beef to Twitter, where she complained that I was determined to stifle her passion.

Well, as I said above, some passions need to be stifled, and raw passion is a detriment, not an aid, to true discernment.

I’ve made the argument many times that sharp words and sarcasm aren’t always inappropriate, but they are certainly inappropriate as a first response to a man of Dr. Piper’s stature. No wonder the self-styled “discernment” community is so odious to milder-tempered Christians.

Separation
It was, however, Dr. Piper himself, not his critics, who first raised the specter of separation. He mentioned the subject twice in his apologia for Warren. First, he said one of the reasons he invites occasional bad-boy types to speak at his conferences is that he hopes the Young, Restless, Reformed movement will not imitate the overzealous separatism of the twentieth-century fundamentalist movement.

I agree that this would be a bad thing, but seriously: Does that really look like it’s a looming danger?

The answer to hyper-separatism is not no separatism at all.

That, of course, was the error of neo-evangelicalism, a movement closer to Dr. Piper’s own roots. Neo-evangelicalism reacted to the extreme militancy of certain angry fundamentalists by repudiating separatism altogether. That philosophy (for which Christianity Today and the National Association of Evangelicals were tireless cheerleaders) steadily and systematically moved the boundaries of the evangelical movement further and further out, until there were effectively no boundaries at all. The mainstream of the movement abandoned its own principles. The movement traded the gospel for shallow political goals. A man of Ted Haggard’s weak character and loose doctrine rose to the highest position of leadership. Good feelings and friendly relations eventually trumped almost every evangelical truth. Finally, the emerging generation began to trade the pragmatism and shallowness of their evangelical parents for a postmodernized brand of religion that at least offered the illusion of more depth and tradition.

Together for the Gospel, The Gospel Coalition, and the so-called Young, Restless, Reformed resurgence of Calvinism all gained their strength chiefly because they effectively answered the trends that had been spawned by evangelicalism’s attempts to broaden its base by becoming more and more inclusive. A return to that practice will in very short order utterly nullify any gains those movements have made.

The fact is, Scripture commands faithful Christians to confront, rebuke, and correct those who twist or reinvent the gospel—not to ask them to speak at our most important conferences. If they fail to amend their errors (as Rick Warren has consistently done), there comes a time when separation is mandatory. The neglect of that duty (and in many cases, a refusal to comply) has destroyed countless churches and evangelical institutions, not to mention the broad evangelical movement itself. Let’s bear that in mind.

Dr. Piper also raised the issue of “secondary separation” near the conclusion of his remarks about Rick Warren. The fact that he brought the issue up at all demonstrates that he knew his invitation to Warren would be divisive. That’s another reason I’m very sorry and disappointed that he made this choice—especially if (as it seems) he extended the invitation to Warren during his first conversation with him, without seeking counsel or affirmation from others (especially his partners in T4G and TGC).

But Dr. Piper’s friendship with Rick Warren doesn’t instantly and automatically make Dr. Piper an enemy of the faith. People have already called for a boycott of his books, reprisals against those who are perceived as “LUKEWARM” in their response to Piper, and practically everything short of assassination. In their minds, those who balk at the cry for some kind of nuclear strike against Piper are guilty of utter apathy and inaction.

That’s a ridiculous point of view.

So is the opinion that no response whatsoever is actually the best possible response. Piper influences people who are under my pastoral care. It would be unconscionable for me to ignore what I am convinced is a dangerously misleading and potentially hurtful decision. But there are several valid, biblical responses that lie between the extremes of sheer apathy and shrill vigilantism. The best option, in a case like this, is to explain as carefully as possible why I disagree with Dr. Piper’s decision, plead with Dr. Piper to reconsider the trajectory he has set, and do everything possible to make the boundaries between the gospel and all other messages as clear as possible. If Dr. Piper continues on this trajectory of ever-broadening boundaries, the time may come when his influence would become such a danger that total separation from him would be necessary. I frankly don’t envision that, given Dr. Piper’s passion for the gospel. But more shocking things have happened.

Meanwhile, I’m not obliged to invite Dr. Piper to speak to my flock in order to prove that I’m not practicing secondary separation. Without utterly anathematizing him, I can certainly temper my enthusiasm in recommending his teaching to impressionable people. I do still have a duty to regard him as a brother rather than an enemy or an apostate (cf. 2 Thessalonians 3:15), and I owe him respect and honor as one to whom those things are due (Romans 13:7).

From my perspective it looks like Dr. Piper is repeating the worst errors of the neo-evangelicals, and his critics are imitating the worst misconduct of the hyper-fundamentalists. I find myself in unfamiliar territory—in the middle—pleading for more restraint, more biblical discernment, less raw passion, and less impulsive behavior on both sides.

I’ll see you at T4G next week.

See also:

• Tim Challies’ response (BTW, I suspect Challies really does think this is a bigger issue than he lets on.)
• Chris Anderson’s response (My thoughts exactly)
• Chris Rosebrough’s response (Some important insight on how Warren manages his critics)

Making Biblical Sense of the Middle East

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Joel Rosenberg, director, Epicenter Conference

TRANSCRIPT

Trying to understand the dynamics of the current situation in the Middle East, from Israel to the Palestinians to Iran to American involvement, is difficult at best.  Ancient history, conflicting religions, land disputes, and ethnic resentment have all combined to create a toxic and often deadly environment.  Throw in economic interests like oil, or even nuclear ambitions, and it is no wonder the world seems to pivot on what takes place in the Middle East.

The good news is that Joel Rosenberg will be joining us on The Christian Worldview this weekend to give a clear, biblical perspective on the region.  It is easy for Christians in the West to misunderstand or despair about the Middle East, but as Joel Rosenberg will explain this weekend, Christians can have clarity and there is real reason for hope in the “Epicenter”.  With an all-star lineup of speakers, you might even want to consider attending Joel’s Epicenter Conference in Philadelphia, June 25-26, 2010.

The Real Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Podcast: Download (8.6MB)

Guest: Mosab Hassan Yousef, author, Son of Hamas

TRANSCRIPT

This weekend on The Christian Worldview, you will hear the riveting account of how the son of one of the founders of Hamas, the militant Islamic Palestinian group that seeks the destruction of Israel, was imprisoned and tortured by the Israelis, then recruited to spy for Israel against Hamas, and finally became a follower of Jesus Christ.

Sound too far-fetched to be true?  Then you haven’t heard about Mosab Hassan Yousef or read his brand new book, Son of Hamas (which is our April-May Book Club selection).

Mosab’s story will give you a truly unique perspective and deepen your understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Now living in secret exile in the United States, Mosab will also share what he knows to be the only solution to this age-old conflict.  Don’t miss a minute of the interview with the “Son of Hamas” this weekend on The Christian Worldview.

> Read Mosab’s first blog post Read more

The Light of the World

S. Lewis Johnson Message of the Week

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD
Dr. S. Lewis Johnson expounds the creation of light by God.

Scripture Reference: Genesis 1:3-5

Click here to listen: The Light of the World

Transcript Excerpt:

Now I’d like to turn to the Bible for the Scripture reading, and we are reading two passages, one from the Book of Genesis and then a passage from Paul’ second epistle to  the Corinthians Chapter 4.  But first let’s turn to Genesis Chapter 1 and I want to read three verses; verses 3, 4, and 5.  We have just read last week of the creation of the heavens and the earth and the resultant formless, static, material creation that resulted.  The Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters and then Moses in the third verse writes, “Then God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light and God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and there was evening and there was morning, one day.”.…

The 10 Commandments: Ancient Law or Modern Grace?

Podcast: Download (8.7MB)

Guest: Albert Mohler, President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

TRANSCRIPT

God gave the 10 Commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai during the time of the Jews’ exodus from their slavery in Egypt. They served as the moral foundation for the nation of Israel and have also served in that way for other nations and peoples throughout the ages.

As the secular quest continues in America to remove the 10 Commandments from every corner of the public square, the question for the Christian remains: “How are the 10 Commandments relevant for me today — aren’t they the old covenant of law and now I’m under the new covenant of grace?”

Dr. Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and author of the new book, “Words from the Fire — Hearing the Voice of God in the 10 Commandments” joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to answer that question and to show us how relevant the 10 Commandments are for your Christian life today.

Render Unto Caesar? On Paying Taxes After Obamacare

A significant number of Christians are now wondering about the moral implications of the Obama health care overhaul. While any number of moral questions will demand attention, the question of abortion stands at the center of concern. And with the question of abortion comes the question of taxes.

Without the legislative remedy of the Hyde Amendment or similar protections, it is almost certain that the new health care legislation will lead to tax-supported abortions. At the very least, the legislation will lead to either direct or indirect tax-payer supported subsidies for some abortions. At the extreme, it could mean outright coverage of abortion services.

Though President Obama’s Executive Order offers some limitations on tax-payer support for abortion, both sides in the abortion debate recognize that his order cannot take precedence over statute, can easily be removed by a court, and does not cover all arenas in which abortions will be provided or subsidized.

So, should Christians defy the government and refuse to pay taxes if some involvement in abortion is almost certain? The answer to that question reaches far beyond the issue of abortion — and far beyond the question of taxation. The answer to that question must be “no.”

The relationship of the Christian to the secular government is fraught with moral questions. Nevertheless, even though the New Testament does not offer a complete primer for Christian citizens on all matters of politics and policy, it does contain clear affirmations to which all faithful believers are obligated.

The New Testament clearly takes a positive view of government as a divinely-ordained institution. “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities,” Paul wrote the church at Rome. He added: “For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.” [Romans 13:1]

This command was originally issued to the young church that was fighting for the faith in the capital city of the Roman Empire. The New Testament clearly affirms that the presence of a functioning government is one of God’s gifts to his human creatures, leading to peacefulness, rightful order, and human flourishing. The absence of a functioning civil government is a disaster and a curse to humanity. Paul here affirms that Christians are to be found subject to the government — even to the government of Rome.

The background to this is the sovereignty of God over all things. God retains his absolute sovereignty, but he delegates some degree of rightful sovereignty to human rulers, governments, and institutions who are, in return, accountable to him and judged by him. God has ordained government and invested it with rightful authority. One who defies the authority of the government thus runs the risk of defying God’s own authority.

Thus, Paul warns: “Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God; and those who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves.” [Romans 13:2]

Clearly, this command has limits. Daniel and the faithful Jewish youths were honored for refusing to bend the knee to a king who set himself up as God. They refused a command that involved the performance of an idolatrous act. They did not launch a tax revolt.

To the Romans, Paul was clear — they should pay their taxes. “Render to all what is due them: tax to whom tas is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor.” [Romans 13:7] In the previous verse, Paul had reminded the Roman Christians that they pay their taxes out of the fear of God’s judgment and the operation of the Christian conscience.

As J. C. Doggett rightly explains, “Paul gives no support to Christian citizens who might be minded to hold back part of their tax liability because they disapprove of the way in which the government might spend the money or because they doubt its fairness. In happier times than Paul’s, Christians nowadays are free to pursue their objections by political means.”

A similar message comes from Peter, who wrote: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.” [1 Peter 2:13-14] By such faithful acts, Christians “may silence the ignorance of foolish men” and be found as good citizens.

Without doubt, the payment of taxes to Rome would involve the subsidy of acts and policies the early Christians would have known to be morally repugnant and wrong. Nevertheless, the believers were commanded to pay their taxes as an act of their own accountability and faithfulness to God. They would give an answer for their rightful obedience to the lawful authority of the government to tax. The rulers will eventually answer to God for their use of those funds.

Jesus Christ also commanded the payment of taxes, setting forth the principle that has become the most familiar expression of the Christian obligation to government. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” [Mark 12:17]

Jesus spoke these words even as He had been challenged by a strange coalition of Pharisees and Herodians, who were attempting to lure Jesus into a trap. The payment of taxes was contorted into a question of lawful authority and the rightful determination of that authority. Jesus answered their question in a way that left his opponents speechless and amazed. “Give Caesar what belongs to him,” is the effect of Jesus’ words. Caesar does not own their souls — which bear the image of God — and he has no ultimate claim upon them. But, a quick look at the coin reveals that it is Caesar who has his image on the coin. That is a small thing, Jesus implies. Give Caesar back his coin.

As Pheme Perkins explains, the issue of taxes in the New Testament emerged in “a political and social context in which taxation was a sign of subordination and oppression.” Add to this the graft and corruption almost universally associated with the tax franchise in the ancient world. Even so, Jesus’ instruction is clear — Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.

Luis E. Lugo puts this text and command in proper perspective when he writes: “While Jesus clearly intends to affirm his followers’ obligations to the state, even a pagan state, the main trust of his statement is to underscore the fact that these obligations are rooted not in the presumed ultimacy or autonomy of human political institutions but in the absolute sovereignty of God, the creator and sustainer of all things.”

With the power to govern comes the power to tax, and government is a divinely-ordained institution. Christians are commanded to pay taxes, and were commanded by Christ and the apostles to pay taxes even to a pagan government involved in immoral and ungodly policies — including the oppression of the Jews and the nation of Israel. Thus, the question of paying taxes after Obamacare is put in its proper perspective.

We cannot and must not bend the knee to Caesar, accepting the government as our ultimate sovereign. We cannot submit to accept idolatry and idolatrous practices. But paying taxes is a matter of our Christian obligation.

There is no Christian mandate against tax avoidance — which is the use of lawful and legitimate measures to limit tax exposure. In other words, Christians are not mandated to seek to maximize their tax bills. But tax evasion is another matter, as is tax resistance. Those who seek by illegitimate and illegal means to resist or evade taxes run into direct confrontation with the commands of Christ and the teaching of the apostles.

Abortion is a moral catastrophe. The murder of the unborn is one of the greatest sins any society can tolerate, much less subsidize by taxation. The impact of the new “Obamacare” health care legislation is not yet fully clear, but the legislation lacks any adequate protection for the unborn. Immorality is added to immorality when the power of the government to tax and confiscate the funds of citizens is involved in such a catastrophe.

For this reason, Christian citizens should be involved at every level in the political process, seeking to use legitimate means to establish full protection for the unborn and for all other vulnerable persons. Elections have consequences, and this new legislation is a reminder of the power of government to do both good and evil.

But to refuse to pay taxes is to deny the legitimacy of the government itself, and to declare it beyond political remedy. Even to Christians suffering under the repressive, murderous, and dictatorial yoke of Rome, Jesus instructed the payment of taxes. Caesar, Christ knew, will one day face the judgment of Almighty God. Rome would one day be brought under his own feet and made subject to him.

We do not “render unto Caesar” because of our confidence in Caesar. We render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, because we are committed with our lives and confidence and consciences to render unto God that which is God’s.

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I am always glad to hear from readers. Write me at mail@albertmohler.com. Follow regular updates on Twitter at www.twitter.com/AlbertMohler

J. C. Doggett, “Taxation,” in New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (InterVarsity Press, 1995), pp. 830-832.

Pheme Perkins, “Taxes in the New Testament,” The Journal of Religious Ethics, 12:182-200 (Fall, 1984).

Luis E. Lugo, “Caesar’s Coin and the Politics of the Kingdom: A Pluralist Perspective,” in Caesar’s Coin Revisited: Christians and the Limits of Government (Washington, DC: Ethics and Public Policy Center/Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), pp. 1-22.

The Creation of the World

S. Lewis Johnson Message of the Week

THE CREATION OF THE WORLD
Dr. S. Lewis Johnson begins his exposition of the first Book of the Bible by expounding the verses of Genesis which describe God’s creative power in eternity.

Scripture Reference: Genesis 1:1-2

Click here to listen: The Creation of the World

Transcript Excerpt:

The subject for this morning in the exposition of the Book of Genesis is the “Creation of the World”.  The question of origin, who we are, from where we have come, for what we are intended has intrigued modern man.  Philosophers discuss the question, Fathers discuss the question, theologians are certainly interested in it.  It’s rather surprising in one way that we are thinking about origin, for if we are discussing other subjects we normally do not think of origin.…

Of First Importance — The Cross and Resurrection at the Center

The Christian faith is not a mere collection of doctrines — a bag of truths. Christianity is a comprehensive truth claim that encompasses every aspect of revealed doctrine, but is centered in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And, as the apostolic preaching makes clear, the Gospel is the priority.

The Apostle Paul affirms this priority when he writes to the Christians in Corinth. In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15, Paul sets out his case:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Paul points directly to the events of the cross and resurrection of Christ. He is not concerned with just any gospel, but with the only gospel that saves. This is “the gospel I preached to you,” Paul reminds the Corinthians. The same Paul who so forcefully warned the Galatians against accepting any false gospel reminds the church at Corinth that the very “gospel I preached to you” is the gospel “by which you are being saved.” Their stewardship of the gospel is underlined in Paul’s words, “if you hold fast to the word I preached to you.”

Paul’s statement of priority is a vital corrective for our confused times. Without hesitation, Paul writes with urgency about the truths that are “as of first importance.” All revealed truth is vital, invaluable, life-changing truth to which every disciple of Christ is fully accountable. But certain truths are of highest importance, and that is the language Paul uses without qualification.

And what is of first importance? “That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,” and “that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” The cross and the empty tomb stand at the center of the Christian faith. Without these, there is no good news — no salvation.

Paul gets right to the heart of the matter in setting out those truths that are “of first importance.” Following his example, we can do no less. These twin truths remain “as of first importance,” and no sermon is complete without the explicit affirmation of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. So it was then, so it is now, and so it ever shall be until Christ claims his church.

As Paul reminded the Corinthians — and now instructs us — the Gospel is at the center of our faith, and the cross and the empty tomb are at the center of the Gospel. “So we preach, and so you believed,” Paul encourages us. [1 Cor. 15:11]

May the power of the cross and the victory of the empty tomb fill every pulpit, every pew, and every Christian heart — and may the Good News of the Gospel be received with joy by sinners in need of a Savior.

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. [1 Corinthians 15:56-58]

An Easter “PSA” on “Cosmic Child Abuse”

Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:45 — 8.7MB)

Guest: Todd Friel, host, Wretched Radio

This weekend, Christians celebrate the most significant event in history — the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Those in other religions and even some professing Christians have called Christ’s sacrifice on the cross “cosmic child abuse”, as in, God violently punished His own Son for the sins of others.  They say a “God of love” should and would never do that.

Todd Friel, the host of “Wretched”, a nationally-syndicated radio and television program, will join us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to issue an Easter “PSA”, as in, why the Penal Substitutionary Atonement of Jesus Christ is not cosmic child abuse, but rather the center point of God’s plan to save sinners like you and me.

Maundy Thursday