As I was reading The Theology of Jonathan Edwards I came across an illustration that I think sheds a lot of light on the progress of the work of redemption (Edwards viewed all of history as displaying Christ’s redemption; from creation to the end of time): “the universe is the chariot in which [Christ] rides, and makes progress towards the last end of all things on the wheels of his providence…[at times] the under part of the wheel of a chariot seems to run backward, but it is not so.” When the world around us, and the church within the world, seem to be moving Christ’s work of redemption backward, it is really just like the rims of a car (probably easier to picture than a chariot!) that appear to be moving backward when the car itself is moving forward. What a great illustration of Christ riding his work-of-redemption chariot unstoppably onward.

A few chapters into it I realized that it feels much like our discussions feel, as though I’m along for an Edwardsean journey led by a tour guide that genuinely loves the landscape.

I highly recommend dropping the money on this one if you have any interest in learning about America’s greatest Theologian (and probably our greatest Philosopher too…)

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:27)

“Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.’ Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…” (Luke 24:44-45a)

It follows that if all of our scriptures are about Christ, then our preaching should be as well. In his excellent book, Christ-Centered Preaching, Bryan Chapel puts it like this: “Christ-centered preaching rightly understood does not seek to discover where Christ is mentioned in every text but to disclose where every text stands in relation to Christ.” If you have every sat over your Bible trying to figure out how to shape a Christ-centered sermon out of the locust plagues of Joel, this is an incredibly helpful explanation. He goes on to say “the grace of God culminating in the person and work of Jesus unfolds in many dimensions throughout the pages of Scripture. The goal of the preacher is not to find novel ways of identifying Christ in every text but to show how each text manifests God’s grace in order to prepare and enable his people to embrace the hope provided by Christ.”

Our preaching should not be characterized by cleverly invented ways of naming Christ in the text, but showing how that text relates to the person and work of Christ. Unfortunately, much of what passes for Christ centered preaching is actually gospel centered preaching. While preaching the true Gospel is nothing to complain about, when every passage of scripture is reduced to a formula (God is good, you are bad, believe in Jesus) there are many dangers.

One danger is that our congregations never develop an understanding and appreciation for God’s entire unfolding work of redemption. They miss the grandeur of Biblical theology by remaining zoomed in and focused on the details of whatever particular brand of the Gospel their preacher is into.

Another danger is that Christ is reduced to a role, to simply what he does for us, causing our affections for him to be limited. When we think of him we think only those attributes that connect with one aspect of His work on our behalf and therefore our worship of him is hamstrung from the very beginning. We must help our congregations know and remember that Jesus is a person, not a bridge. It makes sense to know and talk to a person, all the more to an important, interesting, smart and beautiful person. People fall in love…with people. We are hardwired to find someone to give our hearts and affections to. People don’t fall in love with and give their hearts to a bridge. And talking to one is just silly.

In 1 Corinthians 2:2 Paul says “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Knowing and proclaiming the person AND work of Jesus is what our ministry and preaching ought to be about. Christ-centered preaching leads to proclaiming the Gospel in greater breadth and depth as we zoom into and out of the picture. We must proclaim both the forest (the eternal person of Christ and plan of the work of redemption) and the trees (the details of the application of the Gospel) in our preaching. Otherwise we are creating congregations who can explain the penal substitutionary atonement forward and backward, but have never tasted the sweetness of fellowship with Jesus. In his sermon “A divine and supernatural light,” Jonathan Edwards said “There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind.”

If we want the Gospel to dwell richly in the hearts of our congregations (Col 3:16) we must do more than just give them Gospel formulas. We must appeal to more than just their rational understanding of God’s economy. We must give them Jesus. We must lead them to taste the honey, to have a rational judgement of the Gospel and a sense of the sweetness of the person of Jesus.

“It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.”

In Bonhoeffer’s view, Jesus leads us into true community and out to the dangerous duty of bringing peace to the enemies of God. Having recently finished Eric Metaxes’ “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy” I was struck with how consistently Bonhoeffer lived with this charge, even unto a violent death in the thick of foes. I was also struck with how much we in America take for granted our safe lives in the thick of friends.

Metaxes’ biography is now in paperback and can be picked up here for under $12

Bonhoeffer’s Life Together is here for under $10

“Faith unites the soul with Christ as a bride is united with her bridegroom.” -Luther

“First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father he had to become ours and to dwell within us.” -Calvin

“When a person trusts in Christ, to him or her is granted the entire inheritance that Christ won for us in history.” -Michael Horton

more to come…

“The gospel centres on what God did for us in the incarnate Christ in order to save us from sin, the devil and death. Its goal is the new creation where the people of God redeemed by Christ will enjoy the presence of God for eternity. The gospel is what we must believe in order to be saved. To believe the gospel is to put one’s trust and confidence in the person and work of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord. To preach the gospel is faithfully to proclaim that historical event, along with the God-given interpretation of that event. It cannot be stressed too much that to confuse the gospel with certain important things that go hand in hand with it is to invite theological, hermeneutical and spiritual confusion. Such ingredients of preaching and teaching that we might want to link with the gospel would include the need for the gospel (sin and judgment), the means of receiving the benefits of the gospel (faith and repentance), the results or fruit of the gospel (regeneration, conversion, sanctification, glorification) and the results of rejecting it (wrath, judgment, hell). These, however we define and proclaim them, are not in themselves the gospel. If something is not what God did in and through the historical Jesus two thousand years ago, it is not the gospel. Thus Christians cannot ‘live the gospel’, as they are often exhorted to do. They can only believe it, proclaim it and seek to live consistently with it. Only Jesus lived (and died) the gospel. It is a once-for-all finished and perfect event done for us by another.”

Do you agree that Christians cannot “live the gospel?” Do you agree that the gospel is an historical event and not a lifestyle?

If you are interested in hermeneutics (biblical interpretation) you can find this book on sale here. Also, if you are looking for a resource on what exactly the biblical gospel is check out a great little book by Greg Gilbert called “What is the Gospel?”

Potential hugs and kisses and hand-holding. Potential first steps and bike rides. Potential weddings and grandkids. It is nothing less than affliction of the heart to think about what could have been knowing that it will never be.

Into the messy grief come the difficult questions. Is my baby in heaven? Will I ever get to see or hold her? Why would God allow (or will) this to happen? The day after our miscarriage I was listening to “Ulysses” by Josh Garrels, and found myself weeping while wrestling with these questions. Here are the lyrics in entirety:

“I’m holding on to the hope that one day this could be made right
I’ve been shipwrecked, and left for dead, and I have seen the darkest sights
Everyone I’ve loved seems like a stranger in the night
But oh my heart still burns, tells me to return, and search the fading light

I’m sailing home to you I won’t be long
By the light of moon I will press on
Until, I find, my love

Trouble has beset my ways, and wicked winds have blown
Sirens call my name, they say they’ll ease my pain, then break me on the stones
But true love is the burden that will carry me back home
Carry me with the, memories of the, beauty I have known

I’m sailing home to you I won’t be long
By the light of moon I will press on

So tie me to the mast of this old ship and point me home
Before I lose the one I love, before my chance is gone
I want to hold, her in, my arms”

Though the song is about Ulysses (latinized Odysseus) and his journey home to his wife, it’s a great metaphor for loss and longing. It was the last line, “I want to hold her in my arms” that triggered an uncontrollable flow of tears as I thought about how much I was looking forward to holding our baby, about all the things I was longing to do with her (or him). And as the chorus repeated “I’m sailing home to you I won’t be long” I found myself longing to believe that I was sailing home to our baby in heaven.

But is our baby in heaven? I think so…but I don’t see how we can know for sure. The biggest problem is that the Bible clearly repeats that we are born sinners. Not that we are people who choose to commit sins (though that is certainly true), but that we are sinful in our very identity. 1 Corinthians 15:22 says “in Adam all die,” and Romans 5:12 elaborates: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” The “all sinned” in that verse is best understood as unified with Adam in his sin and as receiving from him our condemnation and sinful nature (see the contrast between union with Adam and union with Christ and the results of that union in Rom 5:12-19). Moreover, in Psalm 51:5 David says “I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me,” and though he was not attempting to develop a theology of original sin, he does contrast the perfect righteousness of God and the total sinfulness of man (himself) throughout the Psalm.

Yet it is David who said of the death of his newborn boy “But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). It could be argued that David is simply talking about death; that his boy died and he will die and therefore he will go to his boy. However, this speech comes directly after he heard of his boy’s death and washed himself, put on new clothes, worshiped, and broke his fast with feast. He seems to be worshiping God in His sovereignty and his speech seems aimed at comfort. It doesn’t seem like a speech of hopeless nihilism, but of comforting hope.

This verse, as well as the continual references Jesus makes to becoming like “little children” in order to inherit the kingdom, gives me hope that my baby is in heaven. My hope is not in clear scriptural proofs (I don’t believe there are any for either argument), but in God’s grace. If my baby is in heaven it isn’t because she deserved it but because God credited it to her through Christ. Is it too much to believe that God could save unborn babies through grace alone? I don’t think so. After all, John the baptist was “filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15).

The other difficult question is “why?” Why would God will this to happen? That’s a question I keep wrestling with Him about. It is true, “we know that for those who love God all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28), but what comfort is that in the midst of sorrow? I’m convinced that we need more than an understanding of God’s sovereignty to carry us through affliction. We need God.

“I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me. Let your steadfast love comfort me according to your promise to your servant.” (Ps 119:75-76)

In order to trust in His sovereignty, we need God. We need His steadfast love to comfort us. We need to look at His promises and the way He always fulfills them. We need His mercy to come to us that we may live (Ps 119:77).

In the meantime, I find myself thinking much of 1 Peter 1:6 “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.” He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through Jesus’ resurrection. He has given us an imperishable inheritance that He keeps for us. He guards our faith by His power.

Why did our unborn baby die? I’m not sure, but I know He is good.

As my church’s website is in the middle of a re-design and is lagging behind in posting sermon audio, here are the past four sermons I preached:

Hebrews 6:13-20

Hebrews 10: 21-25

Hebrews 11:1-4

Hebrews 11:4-7