The word is a mirror

But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.  For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror.  For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

I have wondered in the past how this passage (James 1:22-25) is meant to work.  Maybe I'm just slow.  Being accustomed philosophically to think of being and doing as two separate things, and being accustomed theologically to think of Law and Gospel as rather distinct, I found James' illustration baffling.  How is hearing the word, which in this context seems to be primarily about hearing God's commandments, like looking in a mirror?  Why is the person who doesn't do what he hears like someone who forgets the look of his own face?  What is going on here?

So, I think I've been baffled by this because I've been reading James as if he weren't a Christian, which is a ludicrous thing to do.  James is a Christian, and that means a particular way of reading the commands of God.  Here's how I think it works.

When we read God's commandments, we are not just looking at an abstract list of required or forbidden behaviours.  We are looking at a description of Christ, and what it means and looks like to live in Christ.  The perfect law of God, the law of liberty, shows us what it is like to be free, what it is like to live to God.  In other words, it shows us Christ, and it shows us our true selves as we are elected in Christ to live in him.  When we hear the word, we see ourselves as we are in Christ.  So if we fail to be doers of the word - if we neglect to let what we hear become active in our lives - we are like those who have been shown their true identity and yet forget it instantly.

Imagine there is only one true mirror in the world.  Oh, there are mirrors everywhere in this imaginary world, but all except this one true mirror are like fun house mirrors.  Every other mirror distorts, and only the one will show you what you really look like.  If you look in a bent mirror and conclude that you are absurdly thin, you might increase your diet; or of course if you look in a mirror that makes you look very fat, you might cut down on the old doughnuts.  But if neither of those mirrors is telling you the truth, your behaviour will be inappropriate (and harmful!)  Only the true mirror will help, and it will be important to remember what you saw there when you are confronted by the warped mirrors that fill the world.

Only the word of God - and let's be explicit, that means Jesus Christ, in whom God's Law and Gospel find their perfect unity - will tell you what you are really like.  Every other 'mirror', whether it be the mirror of other people's opinions, or of the prevailing philosophy and anthropology, or your own self-assessment, or even the record of your life to date - all of these are wildly inaccurate.  You are not, really, the person you seem to be to others or to yourself.  In the final analysis - and let's be explicit again, that means Jesus Christ, as the final measure of every man - you are who God calls you to be in Christ.  Trust this mirror, says James, and behave appropriately.

Welcoming and Warning

There is something fascinating going on in Matthew 18:5-6.  Matthew brings together two sayings which are separated in Mark (by three verses) and Luke (by eight chapters!) to make a really interesting juxtaposition:

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened round his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.

What has been particularly stimulating my thinking this morning is the tying together of two themes: welcome and hospitality on the one hand, and leading another into sin on the other.  I feel like one of these gets a lot of airplay in contemporary debate.  The idea of being inclusive and welcoming is very important - and rightly so.  Here it is, from the mouth of the Lord: to welcome someone in Christ's name is to welcome Christ himself (and Mark adds: also to receive the one who sent him, i.e., the Father).  Christian hospitality is crucial, and it is only right that it be talked about a lot.  We could do with moving on to actually practice it, to be honest.  It's worth noting that the discussion here is about welcoming believers - i.e., about practical Christian unity - rather than hospitality towards those outside the community (which the NT addresses elsewhere).  Still, here is an agenda which we ought to get behind - and none the less because in a more general, fuzzy sense it is a popular agenda in the world at large.

Logically, we might think that the 'but' in Matthew 18:6 should be followed by an opposite, something like: whoever turns someone away turns me away.  Instead it is followed by the warning that if anyone causes a believer to sin (literally, to stumble), it would be better for them to drown.  The link, presumably, is partly caused by the ongoing image of the believer as child (reinforced in the narrative by the actual presence of a child).  But that surely isn't all.  Matthew presents this as one complete thought: you should welcome believers in Jesus' name, but you shouldn't cause them to sin.  It is not hard to imagine the multiplicity of ways in which one might cause a believer to sin: by giving a poor example; by failing to encourage and support; by failing to welcome and include, I guess, such that they are cut off from church life; and also by teaching falsely about right and wrong.

I wonder whether there is something here that needs teasing out for the sake of our current discourse.  One of the dynamics in the church at the moment is that there are those pushing for a change in the church's ethical teaching so as to be more inclusive.  I feel like that is taking the theme of Matthew 18:5 and ignoring the 'but'.  The NT has a particular horror of those who will teach the church to believe falsely and behave wrongly.  Matthew is perhaps particularly strong on the latter - consider Matthew 5:17-20.  If we take seriously the call of the NT to radical welcome and inclusion in the name of Jesus, we must also take seriously the call to ethical purity for the sake of Jesus.

Matthew 18:6 is not gentle language.  It is, nevertheless, gracious language.  It is unlikely that anyone who is on the end of an appeal to stop leading others into sin will feel that it is gracious - especially not if language about millstones is involved - but if the Lord Jesus is right (if!) then it is gracious to abruptly correct someone, to point out that they are endangering the souls of themselves and their hearers.  Arguably, it is part of receiving an erring brother or sister in Christ's name to rebuke them strongly, to warn them that they are in danger of forfeiting that name - and all the more so if they have taken on the role of a teacher.

It is not a contradiction of Matthew 18:5 to also read Matthew 18:6.

Though the earth gives way

I preached Psalm 46 at CCC this past Sunday.  It opens with this great picture of the security of God's people:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way,
though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble at its swelling.

Even if everything falls apart - and it is the very destruction of creation that is envisaged here, the undoing of God's good ordering of things through the division of the seas and creation of dry land - even if it all collapses, we will not fear.  Why not?  Because God is our hiding place.  God is our firm foundation.  He is a very present help in trouble.

As an aside, what a great phrase that is!  We can talk about the omnipresence of God if we want to, and certainly the Bible does sometimes talk that way, but the perspective of this Psalm on the question of God's presence is: are you in trouble?  Then God will be there to help you.  This is not a piece of philosophy; it is gospel gospel gospel, all the way down.

One of the things that the rest of the Psalm makes clear is that this uncreation is directly related to human action, human war and destruction.  It is not about 'natural disasters' so much as it is about the ruining of everything through the chaos of a humanity which has 'liberated' itself from God's wise and righteous ways.

And the response to this chaos of humanity is two-fold.  In the present, the Psalmist says, God's people remain secure no matter what.

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.

Notice the water!  Outside, the foaming of the terrible seas and the tidal waves which sink the mountains; inside, the quiet river bubbling gently over its stony bed and refreshing the people of God.  "Whoever believes in me," Jesus said, "out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  The Holy Spirit with God's people is their refreshment and their security.

And then in the future, God will put an end to the destructive ways of humanity.

He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear;
he burns the chariots with fire.

When God calls the nations to be still, and know that he is God, it is because he has ended their chaos once and for all.  The security of God's people in the present is like an outpost of the future, a glimpse into the final security of all creation when God has made it impossible for the earth to fall into the sea or for human beings to rise up against him and one another.

So here's the thing: there are a variety of things that make us feel like the earth is falling into the sea.  The political turmoil in the UK makes me feel that way.  I imagine I will also feel that way (and I realise with rather less justification) when England crash out of the World Cup.  (I am just putting this here as a hypothetical example, I know it's not really going to happen.  It's coming home, right?)

The point is that pretty much all our hopes, whether they are in people, institutions, or processes, are insecure.  Our only solid hope is that in all the trouble that comes our way, and through all the turmoil that shakes the earth, God is our very present help through his Son the Lord Jesus Christ, who supplies to us the glorious sustenance and refreshment of his Holy Spirit.

Dropping Grudem

For pretty much as long as I've been a Christian, Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology has been the standard textbook of conservative evangelical theology.  I have often noted that sadly many people have not taken seriously Grudem's warnings that his book is intended to be introductory (I mean, it's subtitled An introduction to Biblical doctrine, which should be a clue) and have treated it as the final word.  I'm thankful that a wise pastor encouraged me early in my Christian life not to let my theology rest with Grudem but to press on to deeper things.  (That is not to say Grudem wasn't helpful to me - I'm grateful to those who gave me a copy.  It helped me especially to begin to think through positions on baptism, spiritual gifts, Scripture...  But I didn't end up resting with him.)

Anyway, this week Grudem has declared that the building of a border wall in the US is morally good, on the authority of the Bible.  Read the article.

My conclusion from this is that we ought to stop using Grudem's Systematic Theology, or at least demote it from its current position as go-to.

In case you're wondering, this is nothing to do with the politics of the article.  I'm not one of those people who thinks we should boycott people's works because they don't agree with us politically.  I don't even have a very strong opinion about the wall, to be honest.

My concern is for exegesis and theology.

Grudem's argument for the morality of the wall boils down to: the Bible often speaks positively about walls, so building walls is good.  This is of course backed up by a plethora of quotes from Scripture.  But that is all there is to it.

I really don't think this is how the Bible works.  For starters, Scripture does not intend to answer this question, and therefore to read it as if it contained a straightforward answer to a question which it doesn't raise is pretty rash.  It's a flat reading of Scripture, which doesn't seem to recognise that Old Testament references to the walls of Jerusalem can't be crated up, transported over the centuries into a wholly different culture, and then unpacked and used just as they are.

I also don't think it's how theology works.  If we wanted to apply Scripture to this question, we'd have to do more than pile up references to walls from the Bible.  Scripture bears witness to Christ.  That is what it is for: to show us the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  And then of course that witness has implications for all sorts of areas of life and ethics.  But we would need to do the work.  In what way do those references to walls bear witness to Christ?  They do!  Surely the security of Jerusalem throughout the Old Testament, and the walls which are described as encircling the New Jerusalem in Revelation, are images of the eternal security which the people of God have in Christ.  Well then, we have a fair bit of work to do if we're going to work out what the ethical implications might be for nations in the modern world.

And here's the thing: when you go from this article and look back into Grudem's Systematic Theology, something which I've had cause to do recently, you realise that this is the method throughout.  We need a better textbook.