Posted by deangonzales on March 6, 2010
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5 (see also LBCF 26.3), “The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.” There are at least two ramifications that flow from this doctrinal assertion. First, no church or ecclesiastical organization should assume the posture of having arrived at complete doctrinal and spiritual maturity–including Reformed churches and organizations! Hence, when we take too much pride in being “ReformED,” we run the risk of losing sight of the Reformation principle of semper reformanda (”always reforming”) and of assuming the rather haughty posture that we’ve got a “corner on the truth.” As a result, we can tend to spend too much time criticizing others and develop an unhealthy resistance to receiving criticism (whether from outside or inside our circles). Second, since we’re not immune to errors and imbalances and weaknesses, we should be just as ready to learn from others outside our ecclesiastical circles as we are eager to help them see their faults. In other words, we shouldn’t assume that we’re the only ones who have something profitable to bring to the table, that everyone else needs to keep quiet and learn from us. Rather, while we may have some insights and wisdom to offer our evangelical brothers, we can expect they probably have some things to teach us as well.
With the preceding remarks in view, I’d like to commend to you two recent blog entries by one of our seminary students, Bill Streger, Pastor of Kaleo Church in Houston, which is part of the Acts 29 Network, an association of pastors and churches focused on reaching the unchurched and planting churches. In the first entry, entitled, “Uncool People Need Jesus Too” (see link below), Bill directs a caution to pastors within his own ecclesiastical circles. Basically, he warns them against allowing a good thing (i.e., a burden and effort to reach the younger “hip” generation) to develop into an imbalance (i.e., a failure to be burdened for and reach people who may not be young and “hip”). In the second entry, entitled, “What I Actually Meant” (see link below), Bill provides some qualifying remarks to clarify the intent of his original post. He assures his colleagues (some of whom took offense at his first post) that he was offering the admonition not as a broad-brush critique of the whole movement but as a general caution regarding a potential pitfall into which some may unwittingly fall.
Personally, I didn’t need Bill’s qualification. I understood that his remarks were simply a generalization and that he wasn’t impugning the motives of those whom he was warning. Moreover, I understood the cautions as coming from one who was overall appreciative of the good in his ecclesiastical circles but who simply wanted to encourage biblical balance and maturity. Nevertheless, as one who has sometimes offered self-criticisms of my own “movement,” I know what it’s like to be misunderstood. Of course, this is not to say that I’m always above reproach in the way I communicate criticisms. Sometimes I fail to make necessary qualifications. This is why I appreciated Bill’s humble willingness to post a second entry in order to clarify his intentions and even concede that he could have said it better the first time. In the end, though, I think every church, denomination, or ecclesiastical “movement” ought to remain self-critical in the spirit of semper reformanda. If you read both of Bill’s posts, you’ll see that he highly esteems the Acts 29 Network, its leaders, and the brothers who are part of it. But he also recognizes the truth expressed in the Puritan confessions, namely, that no church or body of churches has “fully arrived.” Consequently, he’s willing to be self-critical in the interests of helping his church and his sister churches to become aware of pitfalls and to grow in “the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4:13, ESV).
I believe that we, as Reformed Baptists, can profit from Bill’s caution against the tendency to be trendy and to mimic other ministries in ways that are unwarranted or imbalanced. Perhaps more importantly, we can profit from Bill’s willingness to be self-critical. There’s always a danger of becoming so enamored with our strengths that we become blind to our weaknesses. May the Lord help us!
“Uncool People Need Jesus Too” by Pastor Bill Streger
“What I Actually Meant” by Pastor Bill Streger
Your servant,
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
Posted by deangonzales on February 27, 2010
Matthew 20:20-28 speaks of human ambition. Webster’s Dictionary defines “ambition” as “an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power.” Another dictionary provides a fuller definition. Ambition is “an earnest desire for some type of achievement or distinction, as power, honor, fame, or wealth, and the willingness to strive for its attainment.” The sons of Zebedee were obviously men of ambition. They aspired after greatness. They also had a mother who earnestly wanted to see her two sons achieve their aspirations. And lest we think they were the only disciples who entertained ambitions to greatness, we do well to interpret the indignation of the other ten disciples recorded in verse 24 not as an indication of true humility but as an expression of envy that John and James had beat them to the punch. They too aspired to greatness.
The question I’d like us to ask is, Is it wrong for true disciples of Christ to aspire after greatness? Most of us would probably answer that question affirmatively. Of course it’s wrong! Human ambition doesn’t seem to fit with Christian virtue. However, I want to suggest to you that human ambition in-and-of-itself is not necessarily sinful. Notice carefully that Jesus does not oppose the ambition of James and John per se. He’s not against their aspiration to “greatness,” and he doesn’t condemn their desire for achievement. Instead, Jesus redefines true greatness in the kingdom of God, and he contrasts the Christian approach to achieving greatness with the world’s approach. Look again at verses 25-28:
But Jesus called them to Himself and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Note two things about Jesus’s response to His disciples’ ambition:
1. Jesus doesn’t condemn human ambition but encourages it.
Mark Christ’s words in the first part of verses 26 and 27: “Whoever would be great among you must be …” (v. 26). “And whoever would be first among you must be …” (v. 27). Jesus isn’t mocking the disciples. He’s not being sarcastic. He’s offering them biblical counsel. He’s showing them the way to true greatness. “If you want to be great—if you want to achieve, then this is the method you must follow.” Therefore, we shouldn’t interpret Jesus’s teaching as a blanket condemnation of all human ambition. As a matter of fact, the Bible supports the notion that human ambition is a God-given impulse.
How many of you have met an ambitious oak tree? What about an ambitious fish or bird or cow? It’s true that some animals can be aggressive. And it’s true that some animals can be competitive. There’s always the dog in the pack that aspires to be the “alpha-male.” But whatever ambition animals may possess is only a faint semblance of human ambition. Animals don’t strive for fortune and fame. Animals aren’t preoccupied, like us, with accomplishment and achievement. But there’s a drive within you and me to do something that’s lasting: to leave our mark, to accomplish some great deed, to be successful and find fulfillment. Where did that drive come from?
I want to suggest that it came from the God who created humans in his own image and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). That “creation mandate” not only specified mankind’s God-given task. It also implies a goal toward which humans are to strive. Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and fill the earth with other images of God who would labor together to beautify the earth and harness its natural resources for the glory of God and good of man. And as a reward for their labors, God would grant them a “name,” and they would join him in eternal Sabbath-rest. And God endowed the human heart not only with a conscience that would urge man to imitate his heavenly father morally but God also endowed the human heart with an aspiration to complete his God-given task and to enjoy as a reward fullness of life—something he did not yet experience in the Garden of Eden. I believe this is what Solomon is alluding to in Ecclesiastes 3:11 where he says, “[God] has put eternity in their hearts.” One OT scholar explains it this way:
[The] blessing … promising a consummation of man’s original glory as image of God was … built into man’s very nature as image of God. This eschatological prospect was in-created. It was an aspiration implanted in man’s heart with his existence as God’s image…. The bare perpetuation of man’s original measure of blessedness would actually have been a curse, not a blessing, for it would have amounted to failure in his endeavor to fulfill God’s commission to be fruitful and to extend his dominion..
Brothers and sisters, you and I were made to have aspirations. To borrow from a good friend’s oft-repeated axiom: we were created with a drive and desire to pursue our maximum kingdom potential. This explains why people in the world strive to achieve and accomplish and find fulfillment. True, their ambition for greatness and achievement has been corrupted by sin as we’ll see. But it still testifies to the fact that they’re made in the image of God. My point is this: human ambition is not wrong provided that it’s properly defined and carried out with the right motives, which leads me to the second observation regarding Jesus’s response to his disciples’ ambition:
2. Jesus contrasts godly ambition with worldly ambition
In verse 25-28, Jesus summons his disciples and says to them:
You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave – just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.
It’s important that we interpret Jesus’s words correctly. Jesus is not saying that the Gentiles are wicked simply because they happen to be in power. Nor is He saying it’s wrong to aspire to occupy the role of a leader such as mayor or a governor or even a king. In other words, Jesus is not commending some kind of egalitarian society in which there are no structures of human authority. Instead, I think the right way to understand Jesus’s contrast is to see him contrasting one form of ruling and subduing the earth with another form of ruling and subduing the earth. Like Adam in the Garden, the nations seek to rule and subdue the earth independent of God’s rule and in violation of God’s law. Moreover, they’re ambition is not God’s glory and the good of mankind but their own glory and their own personal good, often at the expense of others. This was true of the Caesars of Jesus’s day. And this is true of many of the rulers in our day. They have no regard for the God of heaven. And they take advantage of their people in order that they might live in luxury and build their palaces and monuments and legacies.
But it’s not just the dictators or prime ministers or politicians in Washington who are guilty of this prideful ambition. Every human who rejects God and his law, who seeks to be his own master, and who attempts to carve out his own destiny with himself at the center falls under Jesus’s censure. Even Jesus’s disciples fell under his censure! It wasn’t wrong for James and John to be ambitious. It wasn’t wrong for them or the other disciples to aspire after greatness in God’s kingdom. Brothers, there’s something wrong with us if we don’t have that aspiration!
What was wrong was their conception of true greatness and the way in which it is attained. True greatness, according to Jesus, consists in adopting the posture of a servant: “Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave — just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:26-28). What is the posture of a servant? I think it involves the following:
(1) Servants are not their own masters but they’re under the authority of another.
God created Adam to be His vice-regent, and He gave Adam dominion over the earth. But that dominion was never to be absolute. Adam had a master. And Adam’s Master expected Adam to carry out the creation mandate in accordance with His revealed will. But Adam failed to do this when he disobeyed God’s word and ate the fruit, saying in effect, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” Certainly not the disposition of a humble servant!!!
(2) Servants do not live for themselves but seek the good of others.
By definition a “servant” is someone who has a master and someone whose function is not just to serve himself but to serve others. The first Adam was just a man, but he grasped after equality with God. He didn’t want “to serve.” He wanted “to be served.” The Second Adam, however, was the God-man. Yet, though he was equal with God, he didn’t grasp after equality with God but took the form of a servant and died on a cross in obedience to his Father’s will so that others might share in his glory. That’s what Jesus means when he says, “Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” “Son of Man” is a Messianic title. It refers to Jesus’s sovereignty and lordship. He is the Lord of lords and the King of kings. Nevertheless, the greatness of Jesus is unlike the greatness of human kings and governments.
- Jesus greatness is characterized by humility
- Jesus greatness is characterized by submission to the will of God
- Jesus greatness is characterized by seeking the good of others.
That, dear brothers and sisters, is the kind of ambition God wants us to have.
Closing Applications
(1) Behold the high calling of servanthood.
This is the privilege and calling of all believers from apostles all the way down to ordinary laypeople. This should be our great ambition. This is where we should find our greatest fulfillment. Not in selfishly making a name for ourselves. Not stepping on others in order to climb up the ladder of worldly success. Rather, our greatest joy and our deepest fulfillment ought to come from wholehearted devotion to God and self-sacrificing service to others.
For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more (1 Cor. 9:19).
For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake (2 Cor. 4:5).
For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another (Gal. 5:1).
When people say, “What’s your church all about? What’s one of its primary distinctives?” The answer should be, “Servanthood. We are people who live not to be served but to serve.” That brings me to my second and final line of application:
(2) Behold what an example of servanthood we have in Jesus
Jesus did not merely define true greatness and proper ambition for his disciples. He demonstrated it! Indeed, it wasn’t long after the incident recorded in our passage that Jesus’s disciples would find themselves in an upper room celebrating the Passover while their own Lord and Master took a towel, assumed the role of a servant, and began washing their feet. And after he finished, he would say to them, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you” (John 13:14-15).
Brothers and sisters, do you want to be great in the kingdom of God? Do you want to offer a great and lasting service to the church? Then let the same attitude and posture that characterized Jesus Christ. Turn with me to Philippians 2 and note how Paul develops this theme:
Who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:6-11).
That’s “greatness.” Jesus wasn’t opposed to greatness. He, as a man in the image of God, aspired after greatness in the kingdom. And he holds out to you and me the prospect of ruling and reigning with him forever! Do you aspire after that? Then listen to Paul’s counsel:
Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit, but in lowliness of mind let each esteem others better than himself. Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others. Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:1-4).
Do you aspire to “rule and reign with Christ”? I hope you do. I certainly do. If that’s our ambition, then let us pursue that goal by “taking the form of a bondservant.” Let us reject selfish ambition and conceit. Let us rather esteem others better than ourselves and look out for their interests, not just our own. Then and only then will we fully appreciate the high calling of servanthood.
Your servant,
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
Posted by deangonzales on January 11, 2010
What should Christians think about human culture? Should they be for it or against it? Before we can answer these questions, we have to define the term. The word “culture” doesn’t appear in most English Bibles. The English noun is related to the verb “to cultivate,” which in turn derives from the Latin verb colere. It was initially used in contexts primarily referring to farming or “agriculture.” Over time the term “culture” acquired a broader usage, referring not just to farming but also to all sorts of human endeavor. The first entry in the American Heritage Dictionary (2009) defines “culture” as “the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.” So culture is everything human societies think, feel, and make. The question is whether this concept is found in the Bible. I believe it is. In fact, the Bible not only describes human culture but it also provides us with ethical guidelines by which to assess it.
Human Culture Is Good
In Genesis 1:26-28, we find the origin of human culture.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Not surprisingly, this passage has been called “the cultural mandate.” God not only creates human beings, but he assigns them a task. They’re not to live in isolation from one another. Men are to marry women and produce children. Those families are to become clans. Those clans are to become cities and nations and societies. And those societies are to work together in order to “subdue the earth.” That is, humans are assigned the task of taking earth’s natural resources and developing or cultivating those resources for the good of man and the glory of God.
Note carefully that it’s not the will of God that man leave the world in its natural state, as some radical environmentalists would call us to do. We’re not to go out into the wheat fields and graze like cattle or walk up to a pine tree and chew on its bark, like Euell Gibbons might have encouraged us to do. On the contrary, we’re to grow the wheat, harvest the wheat with the sickle, separate the grain from the chaff, grind the grain into flour, put it into the oven, and consume it in the form of bread. Likewise, man is to domesticate animals so that the animals serve the needs of society. Man is to mine the earth order to extract various metals to make tools and machinery and coinage. Man is to fell trees and cut stones in order to make homes and buildings and cities. Moreover, the cultural mandate includes learning about the world. God commanded man to learn about the animals and name them according to their characteristics. And we can assume that God also wanted man to learn and classify details about the soil, and the water, and the air, and the trees, and the mountains, and the oceans, and the stars. And God intended this knowledge to be passed on from one generation to another, from one society to another. Furthermore, God endowed man with aesthetic capacity so that he could not only enjoy God’s creation but that man might imitate his Creator’s creativity. So men would not merely extract metal and stone from the earth but he would distinguish some as precious metal and stone. Men would not only build places to live but he would design and adorn the buildings so that they looked attractive. And some would refine the art of communication and others painting and others music. We should also note that God expected man to subdue and rule over the earth in a responsible way. On the one hand, man was not to leave creation in its natural state. On the other hand, man was not to exploit or misuse earth’s resources. So while Christians should reject the agenda of radical environmentalists, they should also reject an anti-environmentalist posture. We are to be concerned about the responsible use and maintenance of earth’s resources.
Now if we stopped reading our Bibles at this point, what would we have to conclude about culture? We’d have to assess human culture in precisely the same way God assessed it: “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31). Of course, God’s primarily assessing his work not man’s work in this verse. Nevertheless, God’s assessment in this verse embraces or includes the mandate he gave to humanity. In other words, God views human culture as a good thing.
Human Culture Is Bad
But we all know that history doesn’t end at Genesis 1:31. When we come to Genesis 3, we read of man’s rebellion against God and his fall into sin. When we come to Genesis 4, we see that human sin spreads from the first generation to the second, and Cain murders his brother Abel. Perhaps Cain took the very sickle he had made to harvest the field and employed it as the first weapon of violence. By the time we reach Genesis 6, we find that the whole earth is corrupt and filled with violence. We read that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). Men are no longer satisfied with God’s norm of monogamous marriage but they give in to sexual lust and begin building harems. They can’t work together in harmony, so they hate and fight and war against each other. Things get so bad that God has to send a worldwide flood to destroy the whole human race with the exception of one family. But the flood didn’t wash away sin. Not long after Noah’s new beginning, we read of humans employing the tool of human language to unite together to build a city with a tower that would reach to heaven. Was their goal to bring glory to God? No, they say in Genesis 11:4, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves.” This is human rebellion on an international scale! And things haven’t improved much since Babel.
Now, in light of mankind’s fall into sin and his subsequent history, how should we evaluate human culture? At this point, the “counter-cultural” Christians may smile and say, “See, we told you. Culture is bad. We must not accommodate to culture; we must avoid it. We must keep it out of the church. Because of human sin, it’s ‘Christ against culture,’ plain and simple.” If that describes your position, you’re partly in the right. There definitely are aspects and dimensions of human culture that we must reject because they’ve been corrupted by human sin. And when we reject those aspects and dimensions of sinful culture, then we’re being “counter cultural” in the right and biblical sense.
Human Culture Is Both Good and Bad
However, I don’t believe the “counter-cultural only” position is a good position. In the first place, it’s not possible. There’s no way for us to completely escape human culture. Certain sects like the Amish have attempted to do this. But in reality, they’re only exchanging one form of human culture for another. They simply reject the American culture of 2009 and try to revert back to the American culture of the late 1800s. More importantly, if we’re only “counter-cultural,” then we’re only partly biblical. And if we’re only partly biblical, then we’re not fully or truly biblical. In point of fact, to be “partly” biblical is often to be “unbiblical.” Certainly, none of us wants to be unbiblical. Therefore, we need to consider more biblical data in order to have a fuller and more accurate view of human culture.
What biblical reality do we need to add to creation and the fall in order to cultivate a more balanced view of human culture? What part of the biblical picture do the “counter-cultural” only Christians often miss? The simple answer is “grace.” According to the Scriptures, God did not completely abandon mankind in his sinful state, but he showed kindness or favor or grace. To be more specific, he bestowed two kinds of grace: common grace to all fallen sinners and special or saving grace to those God chose to save. I think we’re all pretty familiar with God’s special grace, which enabled us to turn from our sin and trust in Jesus Christ—the grace by which God has endowed us with every spiritual blessing in Christ and has secured for us an eternal inheritance. But sometimes we lose sight of God’s common grace. What’s “common grace” from a biblical point of view?
Like the word “culture,” the phrase “common grace” doesn’t appear in the Bible. But the concept of common grace does. Common grace refers to God’s blessings on the human race that fall short of salvation from sin. Theologians usually classify them as follows:
1. God restrains human sin.
When God confused human speech at Babel (Gen. 11:6-9), he was restraining the extent to which that societal sin would develop. Similarly, God doesn’t allow every human being to develop into an Adoph Hitler or a Charles Manson or a Jeffrey Dahmer. Every human being is totally depraved and has the moral capacity to develop into cruel dictators or serial killers. But God doesn’t allow every human being to become as evil as he could potentially become. Jesus recognizes this when he says to Pilate, “He who delivered me over to you has the greater sin” (John 19:11). Pilate was guilty. But Pilate’s sin was not as grievous or blameworthy as the Jewish leaders who delivered Jesus to Pilate.
In light of this reality, we don’t have to view every unconverted workmate, classmate, next-door neighbor, grocery clerk, or baseball coach in the worst possible light. We don’t have to live in the wilderness of Montana for fear that our next-door neighbors might kill us and eat us. We don’t have to ban our child from Little League baseball team because we’re afraid he’ll be kidnapped and sent to a concentration camp. In fact, here in America there’s been such a high degree of common grace that very few Christians have had to endure serious hostility or persecution from unbelievers. And because of God’s common grace, we have many opportunities to develop relationships with unbelievers in the hopes of winning them to Jesus Christ.
2. God bestows some temporal blessings on human beings indiscriminately.
Jesus alludes to this when he instructs his disciples to love their enemies on the basis of God’s indiscriminate love to mankind. “For,” says Jesus, “[God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. 5:45). God doesn’t just do nice things for Christians and bad things for unbelievers. In this life, God is often kind to both. And Jesus wants us to imitate our heavenly father. He doesn’t want us to form little Christian colonies that are separate from unbelievers. On the contrary, he says to us,
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden…. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5:14, 16).
And the people before whom we’re to shine are not just fellow Christians. Jesus wants us to be engaged with unbelievers. “Father,” he prays in John 17, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one” (17:15). Jesus wants us to remain separate from sin. He doesn’t want us to succumb to the wiles of the devil. But Jesus does want us to engage sinners. He wants us be proactive in our gospel outreach. Remember the words of Paul, “For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them” (1 Cor. 9:19).
3. God endows unbelievers with knowledge and skills that benefit society as a whole.
Cain was a murderer. And his descendants turned out to be an ungodly lot. Nevertheless, as we read the Genesis account we discover that God was pleased to endow some of them with a great deal of knowledge and skill. In Genesis 4:20-22 we read that Cain’s descendant Jabal, “He was the father of those who dwell in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe. [And] Tubal-cain; he was the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.” Commenting on this text, John Calvin remarks,
[Moses] expressly celebrates the remaining benediction on that race, which otherwise would have been deemed void and barren of all good. Let us then know, that the sons of Cain, though deprived of the Spirit of regeneration, were yet endued with gifts of no despicable kind; just as the experience of all ages teaches us how widely the rays of divine light have shone on unbelieving nations, for the benefit of the present life.
So Christians are not the only ones who can selectively breed livestock, or make good music, or develop metallurgy. God has endowed many unbelievers with knowledge and skill to provide services, create art, and invent technologies that benefit everybody. In 1 Kings 5:6, we read that Solomon employed the Sidonians to provide him with the timber because no one in the ancient world possessed the same degree of skill as they possessed in cutting timber. And when Solomon began work on the Temple, he sent word to King Hiram of Tyre and asked Hiram to send him a skilled craftsman to oversee the project. So Hiram responded,
Now I have sent a skilled man, who has understanding, Huram-abi …. He is trained to work in gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and wood, and in purple, blue, and crimson fabrics and fine linen, and to do all sorts of engraving and execute any design that may be assigned him, with your craftsmen, the craftsmen of my lord, David your father.
So he didn’t place a fellow Israelite over the project. He chose a man from Tyre. The men of Sidon were better lumberjacks and the men of Tyre were better builders. And Solomon doesn’t limit the use of their products to secular buildings. He employs their technology in the Temple of God even though the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon were some of the most notorious sinners in the Bible!
All of us are greatly indebted to the inventions of Thomas Edison. He developed the carbon microphone that would later be used in telephones. He invented the light bulb and then patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880. Later he invented the phonograph and an early motion picture camera called “the Kinetograph.” Think of what life would be like without electricity, light bulbs, audio and video recording. If you’re Amish, you’d probably say, “Better.” But if you’re like the rest of us, you’re grateful for all the technology that came out of Thomas Edison’s inventions. But it’s highly unlikely Edison was a believer. When asked whether he believed in God, Edison responded, “What you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter.” And he goes on to assert, “It is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made.”
What’s my point? Not everything produced by an unbelieving world is bad in-and-of-itself. True, unbelievers cannot fill and subdue the earth for the glory of God. So in terms of their motives, unbelievers are unable to do good. Moreover, unbelievers often transgress God’s laws. They take another man’s life or another man’s wife. They steal and lie in order to make money. They use God’s world in ways that God’s word prohibits. Nevertheless, thanks to God’s common grace unbelievers are able to write good books. They’re able to create beautiful music. They’re able to invent surgical techniques and medication that save lives. They’re even able to be kind, fair, generous, loving, and honest.
Concluding Applications
I’d like to conclude this brief study with three practical exhortations in light of our brief theology of human culture.
(1) Let’s thank God for his common grace.
Our freedom to worship God today is largely due to God’s common grace. And think of the ways in which modern technology is making it possible to get the gospel to every tribe and every tongue.
(2) Let’s learn to make distinctions between what is good and what is not good in human culture.
It’s not enough to adopt en toto the “Christ against culture” position. Nor would it be biblical adopt absolutely a “Christ pro-culture” position. In reality, Jesus is opposed to some aspects of human cultures—particularly in relation to evil motives and transgressions of God’s law. On the other hand, there are aspects and dimensions of human culture that can be viewed and enjoyed as gifts from God. Moreover, there are some aspects of human culture to which we may accommodate in order to communicate the gospel more effectively (1 Cor. 9:19-22; 10:31-11:1).
(3) Let’s work towards redeeming culture for the glory of God.
Redeeming or transforming human culture doesn’t necessarily mean starting from scratch. It doesn’t mean that as Christians we have to “reinvent the wheel” just because an unbeliever originally came up with the patent. As we’ve seen, God has endowed many unbelievers with knowledge and skill. As a result, at a certain level they can do a fine job at subduing the earth. If you and I were to watch a video of two expert tire repairmen at work—the one a Christian and the other an unbeliever—what difference would we see? Probably none! The main difference between the two would be a matter of the heart. One would be putting that new tire on the car for the glory of God; the other merely for his paycheck.
That’s the part of human culture we need to change. We also need to change aspects of human culture that are clearly violating Scripture: abortion, euthanasia, divorce, adultery, homosexuality, theft, fraud, perjury, crass materialism, etc. And the best way to transform culture is to preach the gospel so that it can transform the people who make culture. “If any man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation; old things have passed away and all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).
Bob Gonzales, Dean
Reformed Baptist Seminary
According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 25.5 (see also LBCF 26.3), “The purest Churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.” There are at least two ramifications that flow from this doctrinal assertion. First, no church or ecclesiastical organization should assume the posture of having arrived at complete doctrinal and spiritual maturity–including Reformed churches and organizations! Hence, when we take too much pride in being “ReformED,” we run the risk of losing sight of the Reformation principle of semper reformanda (”always reforming”) and of assuming the rather haughty posture that we’ve got a “corner on the truth.” As a result, we can tend to spend too much time criticizing others and develop an unhealthy resistance to receiving criticism (whether from outside or inside our circles). Second, since we’re not immune to errors and imbalances and weaknesses, we should be just as ready to learn from others outside our ecclesiastical circles as we are eager to help them see their faults. In other words, we shouldn’t assume that we’re the only ones who have something profitable to bring to the table, that everyone else needs to keep quiet and learn from us. Rather, while we may have some insights and wisdom to offer our evangelical brothers, we can expect they probably have some things to teach us as well.
