Donald Miller and the Unpardonable Sin

Many have already taken Donald Miller to task for his express marginalization of what he labels as the "traditional" way of "finding intimacy" with God through the church.

Perhaps one critical aspect of Miller's "personal preference" that has not yet been addressed is its relationship to the so-called unpardonable sin. Thomas Goodwin, in The Trial of a Christian's Growth has this to say on the matter:

"Or else, as was said, they of their own accord 'forsake the assembly of the saints.’ The Apostle makes this a step to the sin against the Holy Ghost, Heb. x. 25. He saith, that when men forsake the assemblies and company of the people of God, public and private, and love not to quicken and stir up one another, or begin to be shy of those they once accompanied, they are in a nigh degree to that which follows in the next verse, 'to sin wilfully after they have received the knowledge of the truth.’...And if any soul begin to forsake the assemblies of the saints, or be cast out from them, let him look to himself lest he wither in the end, and be twice dead, and so he never come to have life put into him again; that is, repent and return again. And know this, that if you, being, cast out by the church and people of God, break your hearts, so that you mourn for your sin, as the incestuous Corinthian did, it is a sign you are such branches as God will yet make fruitful; but if, being cast out, you begin to wither, as here, the end will be burning." (emphasis mine)

Imagine a hand saying to the rest of the body, "I don't find satisfaction in being attached. You, arm, you're such a bore. All of you, you stifle me! I want to be free." Detached from the arm and the rest of the body, this "postmodern" hand, cut off from the nourishment of a consistent blood supply, soon decays and dies—nothing fit for it then but to be thrown into the fire.

The Cost Is Everything

I would like to believe that every Christian family man shares my dilemma.

I love my wife and children more than myself, but I must love Christ above them.

I often find myself wondering what my reaction would be if God, in His sovereignty, decides to take back His gift of any member of my family. I do not know my heart well enough.

But the witness of men of God of ages past must instruct me. Job tearfully exclaimed, "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). Abraham went through the same convulsions of soul, and the following by Edmund Clowney on the former's convictions serves as wise encouragement:

Abraham was ready to give everything in devoted obedience. Because he feared God, he would pay the price. The Angel stayed his hand. On the mount, Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a bush. He took the ram and offered it in the place of his Isaac. Abraham called the place 'The Lord Will See (to It).'

The cost to Abraham was everything, yet as he clung to the Lord in faith, the cost was nothing. He declared that the Lord would provide, and the Lord did provide. Abraham’s obedience was the obedience of faith. Isaac was given to Abraham a second time. He was his by birth and his by redemption. The offering of the sheep symbolized not only consecration but atonement in the blood of a substitute.

In the total commitment of faith the cost is everything, but in the simple trust of faith, the cost is nothing. Abraham worshiped as God renewed his covenant with him.

The demand that the Lord made of Abraham is not unthinkable. He makes that same total demand of you. Jesus asks it of everyone who would follow him. Whoever loves father, mother, son, or daughter more than the Lord is not worthy of him. Indeed, only as we are ready to receive our own death sentence and take up our cross do we receive everlasting life (Matt. 10:37-39). Much as we need the power of his grace to deny ourselves and follow him, his demand has not changed. Look at the cost: it’s everything. (Preaching Christ in All of Scripture [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2003, 75, emphasis mine)

The Trivium and the Quadruple D of Christianity

We need to have been told of what happened, of how God created reality, of how He covenanted with the pinnacle of His creation—man, of how man broke the covenant, of how God made a way for the breach to be repaired through the life and death of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and of how history has been culminating in the renewal of creation. All this could not have been rationally apprehended internally. This is the DRAMA.

These truths, and their corollaries, were inscripturated in the canonical Bible, and the truth systems inherent in it are called DOCTRINE.

The restored relationship of favor between man and his Covenant Lord puts him in the original position of living, moving, and having his being for the praise and glory of God, and this drama and doctrine-driven response is DOXOLOGY.

The doxological response is then "fleshed out" in daily living in what is called DISCIPLESHIP.

In the table below, Dr. Michael Horton charts the relationship of the trivium to the quadruple D of Christianity:

A Response to Donald Miller's Anti-Intellectualism

In this recent blog post, Donald Miller makes some proposals. I'd like to interact with them on a per paragraph basis.

DM: "The church in America is led by scholars. Essentially, the church is a robust school system created around a framework of lectures and discussions and study. We assume this is the way its supposed to be because this is all we have ever known. I think the scholars have done a good job, but they’ve also recreated the church in their own image. Churches are essentially schools. They look like schools with lecture halls, classrooms, cafeterias and each new church program is basically a teaching program."

ME: If only that were the case, but as J.P. Moreland states,

"Since the 1960s, we have experienced an evolution in what we expect a local church pastor to be. Forty years ago he was expected to be a resident authority on theology and biblical teaching. Slowly this gave way to a model of the pastor as the CEO of the church, the administrative and organizational leader. Today the ministers we want are Christianized pop therapists who are entertaining to listen to" (Love Your God With All Your Mind - The Role of Reason in the Life of the Soul, ch.10, pg.188-189, emphasis mine).

So we have a bit of hasty generalization here on the part of Miller, a fallacious statement which he will go on to elaborate as a problem. I wish he had been more specific as to how the "scholars" had done a "good job" in his view.

Living Out the Law and Gospel Distinction

"Therefore, feeling thy terrors and threatenings, O law! I dip my conscience over head and ears, into the wounds, blood, death, resurrection, and victory of Christ; besides him I will see and hear nothing at all. This faith is our victory, whereby we overcome the terrors of the law, sin, death, and all evils, but not without a great conflict" (Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians 4:5, 597, cited in E. Fisher's The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 128).

"It is easy to speak of these things, but happy he that could know them aright in the conflict of conscience" (idem., Commentary on Galatians 2:19, 259, cited in E. Fisher's The Marrow of Modern Divinity (Scotland, UK: Christian Focus, 2009), 128).

The preceding quotations from the great Reformer, Martin Luther, shed light on the fact that if those who have biblical knowledge of the Law and the Gospel and their distinction go through upheavals of conscience in the application and living out of these truths, how much more pitiful are those who, bereft of the knowledge of these truths, strain and struggle to live out a vital Christian life!

How alarming and heart-breaking it is to see pastors and teachers devote significant amounts of time to instructing their flock in "chaff" when the "wheat" of the Law and the Gospel is neglected in favor of schemes that are, ironically, designed to enable them to become "disciples" of Christ.

Get the Law and the Gospel right and you will have MEN in your church.

Ethical Triangulation

"I will argue that 'What would Jesus do?' is a necessary but not sufficient question for Christian ethics. First, the necessity will be seen by observing that Jesus is really human according to the biblical testimony. He lives an authentic human life and, thus, models ideal human behavior. Second, the insufficiency is shown by noting that Jesus fulfills a unique calling in redemptive history, to which no one else is called. His example must be qualified in several respects. By viewing ethics in light of the Incarnation and the atonement, his continuity and discontinuity with us, then, we can appreciate the importance and the difficulty of imitating Jesus.

...

Because Jesus was fully human, 'the image of the invisible God' (Col. 1:15), he can function as a moral exemplar. It is important to note that the biblical teaching of humanity as the 'image of God' is heightened with regard to this particular human. In fact, the process of salvation involves being 'predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers' (Rom. 8:29). Jesus is humanity perfected, transfigured, even glorified. As even his ascended reign is continuous with human existence, we ought to ask what he does and how we might follow.

Because Jesus was really human, perfectly human, he is the climax of the 'great cloud of witnesses' described in Hebrews 11 and 12. Indeed, the chapter break sadly skews much interpretation of this text. Hebrews 12 offers the highest heights of human faithfulness: 'Looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God' (12:2). The term 'author' might better be rendered 'prototype,' highlighting the exemplary function of Jesus' faith in the midst of suffering. Jesus is human; his experience is continuous with ours; thus, he can and should be imitated.

...

The Christ's life saves precisely because, while human, he was also human in a very different way. He can help his brothers and sisters because he is also the anointed one, set apart and sanctified by the Spirit for the work of salvation. In other words, several factors qualify our attempt to follow Jesus by imitating his behavior.

First, Jesus does not relate to God as a child redeemed from his own sin, while we must always commune with a Father to whom we have been reconciled. Hebrews is very explicit about his innocence: 'It was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for those of the people' (7:26-27). He needed no atonement because he was sinless.

Jesus did trust his Father, believing that joy would come on the far side of Calvary (12:2). Yet Jesus did not believe his Father would forgive him his sins. Indeed, such an issue was moot. Jesus is 'one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin' (4:15). Jesus' piety was not shaped by confession or gratitude for forgiveness. Quite to the contrary, the Christian is meant to do all things in the shadow of the cross. Every good gift and every righteous response to God is meant to be a glorying in the cross (Gal. 6:14). Our trust in the Father must be cross-centered in a way that the incarnate Son's was not and could not be, for we are only adopted children and not children by nature (like Jesus).

Second, Jesus' faithfulness is maintained by a superabundant blessing by the Holy Spirit, which is greater than any such blessing promised for his followers in this life. Again, Hebrews witnesses to the Spirit-anointed works of the incarnate Son. His identity as Messiah is evident due to the witness of 'signs and wonders and various miracles,' all of which can be termed 'gifts of the Holy Spirit' (2:4). Furthermore, his priestly ministry surpasses that of the Old Covenant (chapters 8-10), because his messianic work was 'through the eternal Spirit' (9:14). The Spirit perfected Jesus' humanity during his earthly life, whereas no such gifting is promised to his followers. Unlike the one who was to be a perfect lamb, Christians will be perfected only upon resurrection. Whereas he was transfigured prior to death, our glory comes only on the other side of the tomb.

We do receive the same Spirit that rested upon Christ, and we will do things greater than even the Son (14:12). Thus, we should have a rock-solid confidence that the same Spirit-who ministered to the Messiah in the wilderness and who kept him faithful while suffering hell on the cross-rests upon us. Still, we have no promise that the Spirit will ensure our sinlessness now. We must be realistic by realizing the story arch into which we have been cast. We will not obey as consistently or perfectly as does the Son, because we are not wholly sanctified like him in the here and now.

Third, Jesus' lifestyle was that of the Messiah, whereas we are to be followers of this pioneer of the faith (Heb. 12:3). The same Epistle to the Hebrews that emphasizes the likeness of Jesus and his followers also heightens the once-for-all nature of his atonement and his ministry. He is the 'great high priest' and 'after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high' (1:3). There is a sharp discontinuity between the human life of Jesus and, well, everybody else. This must be honored if we are not to lose the singular sufficiency of the Christ for salvation (solus Christus).

The issue is distinguishing what is repeatable from what is not. Herman Witsius argued that we are to imitate his humanity but not his mediatory work. For example, consider his obedience to the law. Jesus obeyed the law that he might be perfectly suitable as a sin-offering. None of us needs to serve as a sin offering. We might imitate his obedience, however, without the goal of being sin offerings. Whereas he loved persons by dying on their behalf, his followers are to love their neighbors by pointing them to Jesus' death, not by dying themselves. There are differences in vocational calling to be teased out.

Fourth, Jesus' obedience was settled within the cultural contexts and constraints of the first century, whereas we live in different times. This difference is the most obvious and, therefore, needs little unpacking. Various actions that he performed would have different social meaning if repeated identically today. Imitating him is necessarily a hermeneutical enterprise because we live in a world without the Roman Empire, Pharisees, and so forth.

Fifth, Jesus' piety is documented for us in the New Testament, yet the 'life of Jesus' that we can glean from these texts does not directly exemplify any number of social issues that we might imitate. For example, we have no idea how Jesus would act within marriage, for we have no evidence that he was married. While he taught certain things related to marriage, he does not act as a moral guide by means of his own behavior in this regard. We could multiply this limit by showing the number of areas that are simply not recorded by the evangelists or that Jesus presumably did not interact with personally. Whatever he did, we know he did perfectly; but we are not told what this looks like or what it involves.

...

How might we move forward? I suggest that a key principle will be the practice of 'ethical triangulation,' where we imitate Jesus well by imitating those who have followed him (especially the disciples and apostles of the New Testament). Our whole task is trying to locate godly behavior on the moral map. Just as a cellular signal can be located by viewing it relative to a number of towers, so the path of obedience can be discerned by viewing the life of Jesus as one of several examples given to us in the Bible.

We should read the stories of Jesus as happening in our own moral world; but, as Robert Sherman says:

If we see ourselves in such a narrative, we should not be too quick to identify ourselves with the character of Christ, seeking to imitate him in some univocal fashion. Rather, we should identify ourselves with the disciples, recognizing how the conditions and obligations of their lives have been changed because of what Christ has accomplished for them, and because of the Spirit's continuing power and guidance.

Sherman's words are to be heeded, precisely because they echo the emphasis of the New Testament. The apostle Paul called on his readers to imitate him (Phil. 2:19-30; 3:16; 1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1; Gal. 4:12; 1 Thess. 1:6; 2:14; 2 Thess. 3:7, 9). The writer to the Hebrews offers a number of examples for the congregation's consideration: 'Those who through faith and patience inherit the promises' (6:11), 'your leaders, those who spoke to you the Word of God' (13:7), and, most importantly, 'those who have faith and preserve their souls' (10:39). This last group includes the saints from Abel to Jesus, and their obedience is described in multiple ways. They are to be imitated as those whose belief impelled radical obedience (11:6).

How will our Christian life relate to the life of Christ? We will look to his life story as a source for Christian ethics, but we will view his obedience within the canonical context provided by the saints. They are not sinless, evident by the many names in Hebrews 11 that are linked to certain scandals in the Bible (e.g., compare Abraham in Heb. 11:8-12 and 17-19 with Gen. 12:10-20 and 20:1-18). Still, the Bible points us to the righteous behavior of these imperfect images of Christ. As we reflect on their search for faithful ways to honor God, we will have our eyes opened to the way this would look in our own callings and contexts. They serve as final authorities for Christian practice, not because of their own merit but because God has employed them in this biblical capacity.

We should follow and even imitate Jesus, the true and perfect human. Yet we must never allow this emphasis to become a principle of identical repetition, for we are not like him in every respect. Noting key differences and adjusting our moral standards accordingly will be aided by looking also to the example of saints in the pages of the Bible. In so doing, we look to Jesus within canonical and covenantal context."

— Michael Allen, Imitating Jesus, Modern Reformation, March/April Vol. 18 No. 2 2009, pp. 27-30.

The Imitation of Christ vis-à-vis the Gospel

The notion of the Christian life for many who claim to be seeking to live it is bound up in the imitation of Christ. For them, to be a Christian is to live like Christ, and therefore it is ultimately more existential/pragmatic than it is foundational. This of course ably deconstructs the idea of what it means to be a Christian to accomodate the "Christian Buddhist", the "Christian Hindu", the "Christian Muslim", etc., blurring key distinctives and muting biblical Christianity's claim to exclusivity.

"One of the most sinned-against biblical principles is that of the grace of God in the gospel as the pattern, motive and power for Christian living. Let us take the example of Jesus. The Christian church has always acknowledged the role of the imitation of Christ as a valid principle in Christian living. After all, if we cannot see Jesus as an example of the godly life, who can we see this role? Yet the church has recognized, when it has sought to understand things in the light of the Bible, that Jesus did not come primarily to set an example. Following Jesus was not, for the disciples, solely a matter of trying to be like him in his perfect humanity. It was first of all a matter of believing in him as the unique fulfiller of the Old Testament prophecies of the Christ, the Saviour who was to come to do for them what they were powerless to do for themselves. To keep the biblical perspective we need to see that imitation of Jesus is secondary to and the derivative of the acceptance of his unique role in doing things that can never be merely imitated. The Christian disciple imitates elements of Jesus' life and ministry such as serving one another and even laying down one's life for others. But such serving can never achieve what Jesus' serving achieved in the forgiveness of sins and the salvation of all who believe."

- Graeme Goldsworthy, Prayer and the Knowledge of God, ch. 1, p. 12.

Discipleship and Doctrine

"We need sound doctrine, not because we are intellectualists but because we need the surprising good news that we have been saved not by our discipleship but by Christ and his work. We need this doctrine not simply to know how to be saved from God's wrath but for the knowledge of how we have been liberated from the tyranny of sin. Anyone can rise to the occasion and help to make the world a better place, but only through faith in Christ can a sinner be united to Christ and bear the fruit of the Spirit, whose fragrance penetrates this passing age with the scent of the age to come. We need the doctrine in order to know what God is doing in this time between Christ's two comings, as he gathers us to receive his good gifts through preaching and Sacrament, as we respond to him in prayer and praise, contribute to the up-building of the saints through the gifts he has given us, and reach out to the world through witness and service."

- Michael S. Horton (What Is Discipleship Anyway?, Modern Reformation)

Which Jesus Do You Follow?

This song by Todd Agnew moved me to tears. It gave out a loud cry—a call to authentic WORSHIP: the worship of the one, true God, Savior, and Lord, JESUS CHRIST, who came as a lowly and uncomely man—being in essence God—that He might show the mercy and love of the Father to the UNDERDOGS, to those who have come to the end of their ropes and have fully surrendered their lives, their total selves, NOT to more "rope mileage" but to just one thing: TO HAVE JESUS CHRIST INCREASE, AND THEM DECREASE.