Question: which man embodies your definition of “reverence”?

The word “reverence” usually brings to mind hushed tones, majestic stillness, and an inward sense of awe. And this is for good biblical reason. Hebrews 12:28 uses “reverence” and “awe” as parallel expression of acceptable worship. Habakkuk 2:20 accompanies the Lord’s arrival in His temple with the command, “Let all the earth keep silence before Him.” The very word the New Testament uses for “reverence” carries the idea of caution. To reverence the Lord is to see Him as He truly is such that we are stripped of all presumption and flippancy as we are sobered by the weight of His glory. Refusing the caution of this reverence and continuing to walk in presumption toward the Lord is what cost Uzzah and Ananias their lives. To reverence the Lord, then, is to respond to Him as a His creature, on His terms, in the light of His perfections. That is why reverence is often pictured by prostrating ourselves before the Lord. Bowing before the Lord aligns the posture of our body with the posture of our spirit.

I had never noticed, until my wife pointed it out to me on the ride back from Louisville, that this is not all Scripture has to say about reverence. In a striking passage in Hebrews 5, the author is inviting us to key our own intercession off of Christ’s example. In verse 7 he describes the example of Jesus like this: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.” This is a remarkable piece of the Bible’s definition of reverence! Hebrews 5:7 describes the kind of loud cries and tears you would offer in a life or death struggle as “reverence.”

The phrase “to Him who was able to save him from death” is the key to understanding how loud cries and tears can count as reverence. Jesus was reverencing God when He prayed this way because that is the way you pray when you find yourself confronted with death and you see God as your only hope for deliverance. The volume and emotion of Christ’s intercession is in perfect proportion to the seriousness of His situation and the unique, necessary power of God to effect rescue. The implication is that for Jesus (and for us, since He is presented here as our model) to be facing death and not pray to God, yea to not pray to God with significant volume and emotion, would be to dishonor Him. To choose silence in this situation would be out of line with what biblical reverence requires! So reverence can and must include loud cries and tears so far as they are proportionate with the seriousness of our situation and the uniqueness of God to stand in as our Savior.

So the biblical understanding of reverence is much broader and deeper than we might have imagined. It is broader because it can include both awesome silence and loud wailing. It is deeper because it is not our closed eyes or loud cries that determines reverence. What reverence demands in any situation is determined by what God wants. And what He wants is to be made to look in our prayer as uniquely glorious and He truly is. Sometimes that calls for a prostrated, mouth-covering, heart-trembling silence. And other times it calls for a tear-stained, sore-throated crying out.

If we only know one of these ways, there are times and places in our life when we are dishonoring God by being loud when silence is called for, or by being silent when Jesus-like volume is important. May God receive from His church the reverence He deserves.

This need to hear Scripture clearly is particularly important as we cultivate a theology of free will because this topic stirs our society to speak with an especial energy. This means that the opinions we hear will be forceful, but may not be faithful to Scripture. Here are the steps we have taken in our study so far. In the first post we wondered at the biblical preoccupation with the final freedom of God’s will. In the second post we realized that our salvation depends on our dependently working out what God has decisively worked in. In the third installment we watched Scripture tear the veil of tension thought to exist between God’s unsurrendered sovereignty and our authentic responsibility. This post examines how closely this divine sovereignty and human responsibility can coexist – namely, in the one Person of Jesus Christ. Scripture teaches that man has a nature (Acts 14:15; Js. 5:17) and God has a nature (Rm. 1:20; Heb. 1:3). Furthermore, these natures are not the same. Yet Jesus is fully God and fully man. How does the union of these two natures help us think biblically about our free will? 

One Person with Two Natures

We are helped here by a bit of history. Along with the Nicene Creed (325), the Chalcedonian Definition (451) forms the basis of orthodox Christology (Christ-talk). After Nicaea affirmed that Jesus was both fully God and fully man, Chalcedon took up the question of how this double-fullness could exist in one man. After thoroughly listening to and carefully thinking through what God’s word revealed, the divines answered that Christ was two natures (God and man) in one Person (the God-man). They then devoted most of their energy to describing how these two natures worked together. They explained it like this:

We…teach people to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man…to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten God, the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ….

So Jesus is fully God – He has God’s nature. And He is fully man – He has man’s nature. These two natures are undivided, undiluted, unconfused, and unchanged as they come together in what theologians call “the hypostatic union” [hypostasis - person. ie: two natures united in one person].

A Conversation between the Human and Divine Will

What Chalcedon describes, Luke 22:42 illustrates. Here, Jesus prepares to go to the cross by praying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done.” The Chalcedonian key helps us unlock what is happening here. The one Person of Jesus is submitting his human will (remove this cup) to the divine will He shares with His Father (your will be done). He is willing (as God) what He does not want (as man).

There is much to worship here. There is much to wonder at. But we can also see a profound statement about our own nature. When Jesus chooses to walk by his divine will (which saw the cross as a soteriological necessity) instead of his human will (which saw the cross as a cup to be avoided) he is locating the will in the nature rather than the person. Remember, there is only one Person talking here. One Person with two natures. When this one Person gives voice to two distinct wills, if we are to take both statements seriously, these wills can only correspond to His natures.

This same point can be seen in the Trinity. Chalcedonian churches were agreed that all three Persons of the Godhead share one will. They are unique Persons (Father, Son, and Spirit) all sharing one Nature (as God). It is in sharing the single nature of God that they all share the will of God. The point to grasp is that our will is tied to and flows out of our nature. There is no other way to make sense of how Jesus is praying here, given who He is.

Dismantling (un)Willing Robots

Tethering our will to our nature is significant for any talk about its freedom. First, it dismantles all the robots. A common objection to God’s absolute sovereignty (in salvation or otherwise) avers that a lack of self-determination (which is a popular, if unbiblical, definition of free will) would render us robotic in our obedience. This objection proves to be a profound missing of the person/nature distinction. As the true and full man, Jesus has demonstrated that our will is not located in our person, but in our nature. This means that our personhood is unchanged by fluctuating amounts of freedom in our will. This popular distortion of a high view of God’s sovereignty sounds good as a stump speech. If it was carried through consistently, however, it would deny either the full humanity or deity of Jesus in Gethsemane,  and we would have to image the Godhead held hostage to politicking for a tie-breaking vote.

Recognizing Willful Depravity

Second, Scripture identifies our nature as spiritually decapacitated by the depravity of our flesh. Our will is tied to our nature, and our nature is tyrannized by our flesh. This means that our will is free to do only what the flesh wants to do. As Paul says in Eph 2:3, we live in the passions of our flesh…walking (which is an exercise of our will) as sons of disobedience. When it comes to salvation, therefore, we are free to go on resisting Christ, but not free to begin receiving Him.

Any talk about the freedom of our flesh-subjected will should be conditioned by texts like these:

- I am by nature a child of wrath, like the rest of mankind (Eph 2:3). So my spiritual deadness (Eph 2:1) is found not first in what I do, but in who I am.

- By nature I love the darkness and hate the light (Jn 3:19-20).

- By nature my ears are deaf and my heart is hard like stone (Eph 4:18; Ezekiel 36:26).

- By nature (which Paul calls “the mind of the flesh”) I am hostile to God, for [my nature] does not submit to God, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rm. 8:7-8).

- By nature [which Paul calls here 'the natural person'] I do not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to me, and I am not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned (I Cor. 2:14)

- By nature I am unable to come to Christ or accept Him as Lord since “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (I Cor. 12:3) and “no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me drags him”…”no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by my Father” (Jn. 6:44,65).

- By nature I am a slave to sin, held captive by the devil to do his will (Rm. 6:17; 2 Tim 2:26).

Gospel Answer: New Creation

This dark captivity of our will is why it is such stunningly good news to hear that God has caused us to be born again to a living hope (I Pt. 1:3); to hear that we have been born again through the living and abiding word of God (I Pt. 1:18); to hear that of His own free will God brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creation (Js. 1:18); to hear that God’s mercy is so rich and His love is so great that He made us alive together with Christ (Eph. 2:5)! The gospel answer to our situation is new creation! As Paul celebrates in II Corinthians 5:17 “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation! The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.”

New Nature – Freed Will

With this new creation comes eyes of the heart that can receive revelation of Jesus, a soft heart that can feel affection for Jesus, and a liberated heart that is freed to choose Jesus. In other words, with this new creation comes a new nature, and with this new nature comes a freed will! Scripture describes it as a new self that has been created after the likeness of God in righteousness and holiness (Eph. 4:24), a new self that is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator (Col 3:10), a new nature that is alive in the Spirit (Rm 8:9). In fact, through the precious and very great promises that we have received, we are becoming partakers in the divine nature (2 Pt. 1:4). Our person is the same. I am the same ‘Nathan’ that I was before I was saved. But my nature is radically (at its very root!) different, meaning my will has now been freed to choose the One who is all-together lovely. The same is true of you at conversion. You are you (person), but new (nature)! Thank the Lord for His sovereign salvation that freely effects our nature-freeing new creation.

Following the example of the early church:

1. we pray when we are waiting for the fulfillment of divine promises.* Acts 1:14 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses…all these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer. Acts 6:4 We will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. 

2. we pray when we need to know the mind of the Lord on a matter.* Acts 1:24 And they prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chose to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place. 

3. we pray when we need fellowship with the Body of Christ.* Acts 2:42 And they devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (the syntax of this sentence shows that “fellowship” is explained by communion and intercession.)

4. we pray when we need a fresh filling of the Holy Spirit unto bold and effective ministry.* Acts 4:31 And they lifted their voices together to God and said, ‘Now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant, Jesus. And when they had prayed, the place they were meeting was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. 

5. we pray when we are appointing faithful, Spirit-filled members for ministry to the body.* Acts 6:6 Therefore, brothers, pick out seven men, full of the Holy Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty…these they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them. 

6. we pray when other believers are longing to receive the fullness of the Holy Spirit.* Acts 8:15-16 They sent to [the Samaritans] Peter and John, whom come down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 

7. we pray when we need to repent for the wicked intention of our hearts. Acts 8:22 Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you. 

8. we pray when we are blind and wish to regain our sight. Acts 9:11-12 Rise and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul, for behold, he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. 

9. we pray when we require resurrection power to be released. Acts 9:40 But Peter put them all outside, and knelt down and prayed, and turning to the body he said, “Tabitah, arise.” And she opened her eyes, and when she saw Peter, she sat up. Acts 28:8 It happened that the father of Publius lay sick with fever and dysentery. And Paul visited him and prayed, and putting his hands on him healed him. 

10. we pray when the gospel needs to break into new territory. Acts 10:2,4,30-31. Cornelius…a devout man who feared God with all his household, gave alms generously and prayed continually to God…And an angel of God came in and said to him, “Your prayers and your alms have ascended as a memorial before God. And now send men to Joppa and bring one Simon who is called Peter.”

11. we pray when we need God to shatter prejudices that limit our obedience. Acts 10:9 Peter went up on the housetop about the sixth hour to pray…And he saw the heavens open and a sheet descend…And their came a voice, “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.”…What God has made clean, do not call common.” After Peter recounts the vision in 11:5”When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.” 

12. we pray when we need God to break bars of iron.* Acts 12:5, 12 So Peter was kept in prison, but earnest prayer for him was made to God by the church…[After he was miraculously released] He went to the house of Mary, where many were gathered together and were praying. 

13. we pray when we are setting members apart to be sent out by the Spirit.* Acts 13:3 The Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.

14. we pray when we are committing young believers/disciples to the Lord.* Acts 14:23 And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, with prayer and fasting they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. Acts 20:36 And when he had said these things, he knelt down and prayed with them all. Acts 21:5 When our days there were ended, we departed and went on our journey, and they all, with wives and children, accompanied us until we were outside the city. And kneeling down on the beach, we prayed and said farewell to on another. 

15. we pray when jail limits our ministry to rejoicing.* Acts 16:25 About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. 

16. we pray when we are seeking communion with Jesus. Acts 22:17 When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell into a trance and I saw him saying to me, “Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.” 

In looking at this portrait of prayer in the book of Acts, notice especially: 

1. Prayer is often corporate. It defines and describes Christian fellowship (see esp. Acts 2:42)

2. Prayer is Christ-centered. It acknowledges and exalts Him as the Lord (i.e. Acts 1:24 and 2:36)

3. Prayer is communion. Jesus meets and speaks with His people as they pray.

4. Prayer is confession. It glorifies the Lord as the One with the wisdom, strength, forgiveness, watch-care we need. To move without prayer is presumption.

5. Prayer is consistently effective. The clear pattern in Acts is that the Lord responds to His people’s prayer.

Yet too often we come to Scripture expecting to find mesh rather than a mold. We are discomforted by the Psalms because of their imprecatory hatred of God’s enemies. We are embarrassed by the Song of Solomon because of its unblushing enjoyment of God-given sexuality. We nod uncomprehendingly at the Sermon on the Mount because we can’t imagine grace actually intensifying the demands of the law. And of course we explain away the book of Revelation because if such things ever began to break out across the earth our 21st century American dream would come crashing down.

The relationship of God’s sovereignty to our free will is one issue where we manage to be discomforted, embarrassed, uncomprehending and intent on explaining away the teaching of Scripture all at once! This is a popular and important topic – though for different reasons than we might imagine. What (surprises!) do we find when we go to Scripture and ask how to think and talk about free will?

An earlier post presented the overwhelming biblical emphasis on God’s final freedom. The Bible insists that we understand first what it means that God’s will is free and it discusses our free(d) will only in relation to His sovereignty. The unbounded freedom of His will defines the boundaries of our own. This post picks up where that one left off by asking how Scripture speaks about the interrelationship of these two (equally real but not identical) freedoms. I take up a New Testament text in this post, and an Old Testament example in the next. In both cases, from both Testaments, we learn to speak about our free will as a gift of God’s grace. Receiving freedom as a gift of grace means that our responsible exercise of that gift is obedience to the will of our Sovereign.

It is helpful to break our discussion of II Corinthians 8 down into three segments because Paul cycles through this issue three times in this chapter, reinforcing the main point and shedding more light each time.

(1) II Corinthians 8:1-5

II Corinthians 8:3 is one of the clearest identifications of human free will in Scripture (remember, there aren’t many!). Paul is marveling at the generosity of the Macedonian churches, which he describes like this: For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints. ”Free will” seems to mean here the ability to choose what to do with their resources, meager as they were. The Macedonians have been afflicted by a severe test and are enduring extreme poverty (vs 2), yet they freely choose to give beyond their means to assist the saints in Jerusalem. This is not the result of any kind of coercion. Rather, it is “free” and even coveted as a “favor.”

The free will of vs 3 does not exist in a theological vacuum, however. It is surrounded by the affirmations of God’s will at work before and behind this situation that come in vs 1 and vs 5. In vs 1 Paul introduces the scenario by saying: I want you to know brothers [in Corinth] about the grace of God that has been given among the churches at Macedonia. So the free will of vs 3 rests on the foundation of God’s grace given in vs 1. God gave them grace with the result that they gave of their own free will. Vs 5 returns the focus to God as the decisive “will” in the Macedonian decision: they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. So the free will in the church to give money flowed out of God’s will that they give themselves to the apostle’s work. God gave, and they gave. God willed, and they chose. In fact, the “favor” they begged for in vs 4 is the same word Paul uses in vs 1 – grace. They are begging earnestly for the grace to give. Vs 1 affirms that this grace has been given to them by God, because, as vs 5 teaches, it was God’s will that they give themselves to this work. So our free will is a gift of God’s grace and is to be exercised in obedience to His design.

(2) II Corinthians 8:9-11

If you were to stop here and ask whether God’s will overrides the human will, or makes their work unnecessary (a common accusation against a high view of divine sovereignty) then you need only read on through vs 10. Here Paul applies the Macedonian lesson to the Corinthian church (who have also received the grace of Jesus Christ…which likewise benefits you vss.9-10). The result of this grace is that a year ago [you] started not only to do this work but also to desire to do it. So God’s grace changed their desire (their will) so that they began to take up a collection. Does God’s work render their own will unnecessary or their obedience irrelevant?  By no means! Vs 11 continues with the pastoral application: So now finish doing it as well, so that your readiness in desiring it may be matched by your completing it out of what you have. God willed and worked to change their hearts (give them a desire). Their role, dependent on God’s grace, is now to engage their will and work and finish the task (In 9:5 Paul terms this obedience a “willing gift!). This is an amazingly consistent biblical picture of how our will works with God’s will. He is the decisive doer. We are the dependent doers. He must work, and we must work, and our work only works if He is working!

(3) II Corinthians 8:16-17

That this dynamic – our free will depending on God’s gift of grace – is not unique to this one situation is clear from vs 16 where Paul transitions to talking about Titus. Here again he commends Titus for being himself very earnest and so going to you of his own accord (vs 17). This means his upcoming trip is a choice Titus himself has made. “Of his own accord” seems to be a parallel with the earlier description “of their own free will.” In both cases human beings are freely choosing how to invest themselves.

But (or many “and” is better here) this free choice likewise rests on the foundation of God’s grace. God has done something first, and decisively. The same God who gave grace among the Macedonian church that resulted in them begging for the grace of giving, has now put into the heart of Titus the same earnest care I have for you (vs 16). Titus goes of his own accord because of his earnest care. An earnest care God put there. Here it is important to notice not only that Titus’ concern is empowered by God’s gift, but also that this decisive work of God does nothing to dampen Paul’s description of Titus’ care. It is an earnest concern. This description of a God-given concern as “earnest” and “of his own accord” should give us pause when we are tempted to imagine that a sovereign work of God on our will would empty our resultant decisions of moral value or emotional force.

Conclusion

Taking in this chapter as a whole, it is instructive to note how seamlessly Scripture toggles back and forth between an earnest, free human will and the ultimately earnest, ultimately free divine will. There is no hint of embarrassment, as if Paul realized mid-sentence he was talking out of both sides of his mouth. There is no pause to diffuse debates that might arise in Corinth over how both divine sovereignty and human responsibility can lie behind the same act. There is no sense that either the divine will is impinged upon or the human will violated by the activity of the other. It should strike us that this chapter is written as an example. It is meant to function as an encouragement, as well as instruction. This is a praise report and then a commendation. Paul apparently believes that the best way to stir not only the praise of the church, but also her practical obedience, is to tell two stories about fellow believers acting out of their own free will that they depended upon God to give.

It is clear that this same teaching does not produce either worship or a renewed confidence in our work today. To this degree, we are out of step with Scripture. We are being surprised by the Bible. When the dissonance between our assumptions and the biblical presentation jars us, our next steps are pivotal for our spiritual growth. The path to maturity summons us to thank God for His ways, which are not ours; thank God for His word, which reveals Himself to us; thank God for His work in our life, which has given us the light we have so far; and plead with God for a will that is freed to embrace His truth and obey His tasks through His continuing gift of grace.

That would be a surprising response to this topic – would it not?

Imagine this scene:

Paul has just spent days, maybe weeks, dictating his letter to the church in Rome. He has invested hours pacing and praying, laboring to pick just the word that will communicate the burden that is burning in his heart. Tertius has faithfully written as Paul talked, at times re-writing, at times reading  out loud so Paul can hear how it all flows together. The Spirit of God has been invoked from the very beginning. He has inspired not only the apostle’s thoughts, but the very words that are being used to squeeze the breath of God down into human syntax. It has been a season of work and worship like neither of them have ever known.

And just as Tertius finishes - to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ! Amen - and begins to roll up the scroll, Paul strides across the room, grabs the scroll, tears it down the center and says, “just dash off a note telling the church to ‘follow the Spirit’ when they meet together.” 

The response I imagine you would have to witnessing this event is something of the way I responded the other week when a pastor’s spontaneity was made a sign of his spirituality. I was listening to a friend describe the praiseworthy traits of his pastor. And the quality he put at the top of the pile was spontaneity. What made this man truly and powerful spiritual, in my friend’s opinion, were the times he had torn up his manuscript just minutes before walking into the pulpit. Here was proof of a spiritual giant – he tore up the letter to the Romans right before he sent it.

This scenario is obviously overblown. When we are dealing with the inspiration of Scripture we are in a whole different orbit from a preacher’s sunday sermon. But the Reformers taught that when God’s Word was proclaimed, God Himself was speaking. So I use the example because Paul following the Spirit in writing Romans and this pastor tearing up a sermon manuscript in order to “follow the Spirit” have interesting parallels when it comes to people being helped to hear the word of God.

I suppose I should put in two quick qualifiers here. (1) I agree that there may be times when the Spirit sets a direction that we were not sensitive to discern before. In these times we should hold our agendas loosely. But my friend was voicing something that I am hearing more and more – his opinion was not only that spontaneity could be following the Spirit, but that spontaneity is necessarily following the Spirit.  (2) I am supposing that the torn up sermon was the product of hours of careful study and constant prayer that resulted in a message faithful to God’s word. It was s sermon, in other words, that would have been glorifying to God and helpful to His people had it been preached!

Here are some of the questions I would have for Paul, had he torn up Romans, as I have for this pastor, who tore up his sermon:

(1) Do you not believe that the same Holy Spirit whose voice you want to hear speak in the meeting is speaking to you as you read and write? If you were asking for His help over the text and He gave you light, does discarding that message not come very close to disregarding His voice?

(2) Is it not presumptuous to try and time the work of the Spirit who is no respecter of persons, or meeting times? In other words, the urgency you feel as the service starts may be the urgency the Spirit felt last week when He illuminated the exegesis and application of your sermon. This means there may be more flesh in the “new thing” produced by the urgency you feel than there is Spirit.

(3) Is it not a fallacy to assume that newer is better? Why would what God gave you two days ago out of His timeless Word be less powerful or relevant than what He gave 30 minutes ago?

(4) The implications of what you say will be far less carefully considered if words are coming out of your mouth at the same time they are coming into your mind. As a shepherd accountable for the help he gives his people, how can you feel comfortable starting down a road you haven’t yet been able to trace to the end?

(5) Why should we imagine that what God spoke when we were still, listening, probing, working – beholding the face of God, should be discarded in favor of what our emotions feel is best or most helpful when we behold the faces of men? Is this not a subtle way to disguise a pride that assumes we know better what is needed here? Does it not open the door for a man-pleasing spirit to be disguised as spirituality?

Paul didn’t tear up Romans. Most preachers don’t tear up their sermons – at least not right before the preach them! But the deeper issue here is a culture that idolizes the spontaneous as a way of throwing off the bonds of God-exalting tradition, escaping the labor of thorough preparation, or displaying our own gifting and preferences. It is true, of course, that every believer (and how much more every preacher) must have an overflow. We must be ready, even when there has been no time for preparation. And we must be willing to submit our agenda to His. But we must not be allured by the lie that worship sets or sermons or prayers or family devotions are at their most spiritual when they are the most spontaneous.

The biblical word that may best capture true spirituality is not spontaneity but steadfastness. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life (Js. 1:12). May steadfast, spiritual men walk into pulpits all across this nation tomorrow morning, with manuscripts intact!

Christ, my Life, my living Flame,

burning off all guilty shame;

Every blessing found in You,

pollution cleansed, man made new.

Atonement takes sin’s stain away,

just execution granted stay;

New I am, and becoming new,

ever onward, more like You.

Quickening Ray of Spirit’s life,

loving heart replaces strife;

Sounding of the Father’s heart,

chosen ere first dawn’s faint arc.

Side and stone hard pierced and rolled,

shepherd bleeds to bar His fold;

Death defanged on Easter morn,

our Victor’s crown captives adorn.

Alive in Christ to die no more,

raised with Him to heaven’s shore;

Seated, we His session share,

sing Hallelujah, Savior fare.

The flow of Paul’s thought in the previous verses drives us to this word with a renewed sense of urgency. Verse 12 has called us to obey our exalted Lord by working out the precious salvation we have received. This daily developing of our salvation, vs 14 shows us, concerns more than our external behavior, but focuses on the attitudes of our heart. Christ-honoring obedience requires doing the will of God from the heart (Romans 6:17; Eph 6:6). Because what comes out of the mouth is an overflow of what is going on in the heart of a believer (Matt. 15:18), working out our salvation means “doing all things without grumbling and questioning” but instead “doing all things with rejoicing and thanksgiving” (Phil. 4:4,6).

Right in the middle of these two verses, one summoning us to the fight of faith and the other directing this fight to the domain of our will (heart), stands the gospel of vs 13. We must daily work out our salvation. And we can do this daily working out because God is at work in us to daily work in us. And this God-work targets both our willing and our working. So God works in us at the level of our will. Which, as the Psalmists recognized, is exactly what we so desperately need – unite my heart O God, enlarge my heart, incline my heart, search my heart, purify my heart – this is the way they teach us to pray! Change my heart O God! And Paul celebrates in vs 13 that this fight is indeed a fight of faith – it is a daily depending on God for what He alone can do and what He will surely do. Namely, work on our will.

The power of vs 16 in this flow of thought is that here Paul answers the “how” question. The way God works in us, and the way He works in us at the level of our will, is by His word. God works in us both to will and to work as we hold fast the word of life. This is the place we go (never leave!) to receive God’s promised life-giving work.

The rest of Scripture reveals a stunning portrait of the life that God works in us by His word. Here is a beginning study:

(1) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our faith since faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. (Romans 10:17) See also Romans 12:3.

(2) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our joy since “I have spoken these things to you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Psalm 19 tells us that it is the precepts of the Lord that rejoice the heart.

(3) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our light since “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path (Ps 119:105). See also II Pt. 1:19.

(4) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our freedom since “if you abide in my word…you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31). See also Ps. 119:32.

(5) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our holiness since Jesus asked the Father to “sanctify them in your truth, your word is truth” (John 17:17).

(6) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our fruitfulness since it is when our delight is in the law of the Lord and on His law we meditate day and night that “you will be like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season, and its leaf does not wither” (Ps. 1:2-3).

(7) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our hope since “whatever was written in the former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope” (Rm. 15:4). See also Psalm 119:49.

(8) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our love since Paul urges Timothy, “to charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine…the aim of our instruction is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (I Tim. 1:5).

(9) We hold fast to the word of the sake of our healing since “He sent forth His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction” (Ps. 107:20). This is how Paul instructs Timothy to think of deliverance happening as well. As men are faithful and able to teach the word, instructing and correcting the congregation, “God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will” (II Tim. 2:25-26).

(10) We hold fast to the word for the sake of our wisdom since “the sacred writings are able to make you wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.” Indeed “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (II Tim. 3:15-16). See also Ps. 119:24, 97-100, 130.

This is just some of what it means that Scripture is alive, it is active, it is able and it is at work in us as we hold it fast. This is the life-giving work God has appointed His Word to perform in a believer. God works on our will by His word. May we fight the fight of faith, taking up the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God, and hold it fast.

As Jesus talks with Nicodemus in John 3, we may recognize ourselves in a man who “marvels” and “does not understand” when Jesus posits the free will of the Spirit. “The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” This is not the last time that someone would marvel at the assertion of God’s free will, especially where our salvation is concerned. In fact, the need to preserve “free will” seems to be a regular feature in soteriological debates.

What was surprising to me when I began to study the biblical witness is how often, how comprehensively, and how energetically God’s Word insists on His final freedom. We so often want to talk about our free will; while the Bible says so little about that but so often wants us to worship the final freedom of our sovereign God. In fact, Scripture includes explicit affirmations of final freedom for each member of the Triune God.

Here is a sampling of what I found:

The Father’s final freedom is celebrated in texts like these:

Exodus 3:14 God said to Moses “I AM who I AM”. Say to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”

Isaiah 43:13 “I am he; there is none who can deliver from my hand; I work, and who can turn it back?”

Isaiah 45:6-9 I am the Lord and there is no other; I form light and create darkness, I make well-being and create calamity, I am the Lord, who does all these things…woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’? Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’ or to a woman ‘With what are you in labor?’

Daniel 4:35 All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?”

Ephesians 1:11 In him [Christ] we have been chosen, having been predestined according to the purpose of him [Father, see vs 4] who works all things according to the counsel of his will.

James 1:18 Of his own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of His creation. (cp. Jn. 1:12-13)

II Timothy 2:25 God may perhaps grant them repentance.

Paul’s sustained defense of God’s freedom found in Romans 9-11 could be included here in its entirety, as could the book of Jonah.  The issue of final freedom is bound up most often with God’s identity as Creator, Lord and Judge such that He is finally free because He is the One all of our (dependent, conditioned, but real) freedom comes from, is ruled by, and is accountable to.

The Son’s final freedom is celebrated in texts like these:

Philippians 3:21 The Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. I Corinthians 15 is an extended commentary on this verse.

Colossians 2:19 [Christ is] the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God. Ephesians 1 and 4 expand on this idea of Christ supplying life and leadership to the church.

John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. If it is in relationship with Jesus that we are set free from our bondage to self, sin and Satan (cf Col. 1:13), the Securer of our freedom must himself be free.

John 10:18 No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. The Son’s final freedom is not independent of the Father’s final freedom. The same is true of the Spirit’s work.

John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you should bear fruit.

John 17:2 Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh.

John 19:11 You [Pilate] would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above.

The Spirit’s final freedom is celebrated in texts like these:

John 3:8 The wind [Spirit] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So those born of the Spirit are.

Acts 10:44 While Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word. This saving work is interpreted by the apostles in 11:17-18 like this: “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?” When they heard these things they fell silent. And they glorified God, saying, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life.”

I Corinthians 12:11 All these [spiritual gifts] are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.

Hebrews 2:4 It was declared at first by the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will.

This is a beginning of the biblical witness to the glorious, absolute and final freedom of our Creator God. All other freedom, while real, is the derivative and dependent freedom of the creature (Luther called it the “freed” rather than the “free” will). It is true that certain texts acknowledge the freedom of the human will. But to make a musical analogy, the individual notes of those texts are themselves written in the key of this comprehensive biblical testimony. Thus they will only be heard rightly if they are allowed to sound in a context where our faith (Romans 12:3) influence (II Cor. 10:13), physical freedom (Romans 15:32) and very life (James 4:15) are assigned by God.

This final freedom is, in a sense, what it means to be God. Therefore only one will can be finally free. And that will, as the Bible delights to reveal to us, is that of the only wise, all good, ever-loving, perfectly just God. May the truths in these Scriptures stir our freed will to worship this ultimately and always free God!

…complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own but also to the others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a grasping thing, but made hiumself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

The main point that rises from the opening exhortation of Philippians 2 is this: God shows me how He saved me as you serve me! That is, I receive a physical, visible, tangible demonstration of the way God worked to accomplish my salvation as I am served by my “gospel-partners” (as Paul loves to call believers, Phil. 1:5). 

God Shows Me

Paul has just mentioned the “one mind” that governs a believers’ manner of life at the end of chapter 1. In 1:27 he encourages us that when we “stand firm in one spirit, with one mind, striving side by side for the sake of the gospel…this is a clear sign of your salvation.” Furthermore, this sign comes “from God.” In His mercy, God has ordained that believers receive a sign of His otherwise invisible gift of saving faith (1:6; 1:29; 2:13). This sign comes in the shape of “believers being of the same mind.” This mind is explicitly identified in 2:5 as “the mind which is yours in Christ.” So what we all participate in by the Spirit (2:1) is the mind of Christ. Therefore, when a saint sees a group of people around him who all share with him in the one mind of Christ, God is signaling to that saint the certainty and reality of His saving work. Believers striving together with one mind serve as a clear sign of God’s salvation.

How He Saved Me

This sign works to signal our salvation because the mind of Christ in the saints moves them to serve one another in the same way they have been served by Christ. Paul works in 2:5-8 to outline the manner of life that results from a Christ-like mindset. Christ Himself is our pattern! Christ did not count equality with God a grasping thing, that is, a privileged position from which to promote Himself. As we share His mind we will count others more significant than ourselves. He humbled Himself and took the form of a servant. So we will humble ourselves and look out for the interests of others. He emptied himself, and so we must not do anything from vain (empty) glory. Christian service is patterned after Christ’s saving work.

The operable word in both vss 1-4 (our manner of life) and 5-8 (Christ’s example) is “count.” We must “count” others more significant than ourselves even as Christ did not “count” equality with God a thing to be grasped. The significance of this word is that it does not require our response to one another to reflect the way things are, but the we consider them to be. Christ’s example makes this plain. He was the King. We were not worthy of His service. Therefore He did not humble Himself and serve us because He owed us. Rather, in humility He counted unworthy slaves to be worthy of His coming, living and dying. This “counting” is the core dynamic at work in “the mind of Christ.” Therefore as believers we choose to count one another as more important. And by this counting we choose to serve their interests ahead of our own.

This service is the heart of the gospel. In John 13 we see a vivid picture. On the night he would complete his humiliation by going to the cross, Jesus rose from supper, laid aside his outer garments, took a towel, and tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciple’s feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

This majestically simple story pictures the seven verbs of our salvation. It is an eyewitness account of Philippians 2:6. As co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, Jesus rose from His seat at the Father’s right hand and laid aside the privileges of the Godhead as He took to Himself the humility of a servant’s form, tying human frailty to divine majesty. Coming to the cross he poured out his blood for our cleansing, washing away the stain of our sin and wiping away all our fearful tears. God saved us by an act of unparalleled service!

As You Serve Me

John finishes his account this way: “After washing, he resumed his place and said,“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 also should do just as I have done to you.”

From Philippians 2 we know that Christ has indeed “resumed his place”, God having highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

It is this exalted Jesus, then, who says to us, “As I have washed your feet, so you ought to wash one another’s feet.” As I have served you, so you should serve one another. As I have counted your interests more significant than my own, so you should count one another as more significant than yourselves. This is the mind of Christ. The mind that shows itself in service to the saints. When we serve one another, letting His mind direct our manner of life, we are demonstrating the saving service of Christ. It is for this reason that we can say – God shows me how He saved me as you serve me.

This sign of our salvation – saints standing firm in one mind, the mind of Christ, a mind that manifests itself in service – is given by God to encourage the church as we see in it the proof and power of our salvation. What a glorious weight and eternal purpose this passage gives to our daily work. Every need is an opportunity to demonstrate the saving service of Christ. And every need met is an invitation to worship the God of our salvation. God shows me how He saves me as you serve me.

The chapter begins with Jesus’ admonition that we should not judge blindly. There is a way of judging that brings condemnation on us, namely trying to remove the speck in our brother’s eye without first taking the plank out of our own. Without the humility and grace that comes from first taking the log out of our own eye, we cannot see clearly to help our brother. Tying this to the “therefore” of vs 12 we find an example of something we would not want done to us – eye surgery by a plank-eyed doctor – and so we should not do it to others.

Jesus moves next to invite persistent prayer for good things from the Father’s hand. We can ask and seek and knock in the confidence that if we, evil parents by comparison, know how to bless our children, how much more will our perfect heavenly Father give good things when His children ask. This is usually where I lose my “brother” focus and apply this invitation in a purely personal way. But Jesus challenges that self-focus by moving in the next breath to say “therefore, what you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.” In other words, this paragraph too is about the way I relate to others.

The link is found in noticing the way the word “brothers” in 7:3, 4 and 5 becomes “sons” in 7:9. Since we share the same Father His sons are my brothers. Recognizing this filial connection opens a way for me to embrace the “one another” aspect of this prayer. Because I want to receive good gifts from my Father, and because these good gifts come as answers to prayer, I should pray these kinds of prayers for my brothers! I wish others would present my needs before the Father so that they are met. I, therefore, should readily do the same for His other sons.

So in these two ways at least may we grow in the Golden Rule – judging our brothers only with tear-filled, plank-free eyes; and offering pleas to our good Father on behalf of His sons. Plank-less and Plea-filled, for one another!