Jeff Ling

“All inadequate doctrines of the atonement are due to inadequate doctrines of God and man. If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to his, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely ‘hell–deserving sinners’, then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before.”

— John Stott
The Cross of Christ

Psalm 131 is one of the most meaningful of all the Psalms to me.

John Calvin

O LORD, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
O Israel, hope in the LORD
from this time forth and forevermore.
(Psalm 131 ESV)

The picture here is a lovely and comforting one. David acknowledges the absolute brain cramp that can accompany trying to understand the Sovereign God of Heaven and Earth. Even that phrase, the Sovereign God of Heaven and Earth, sounds the alarm:  mere mortals need not tread here! And well it should. He is beyond understanding. To quote Spurgeon: “As well might a gnat seek to drink in the ocean, as a finite creature to comprehend the Eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God. If we could grasp Him, He could not be infinite. If we could understand Him, He could not be divine.”

And yet….

We are told by our Lord Jesus, “and this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) The Apostle Paul urges us to , “ to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10 )   Seek me and you will find me, declares the Lord (Jer.29:13) and yet  ”it is the glory of God to conceal things…” (Prov. 25:2)

The Puritan writer Thomas Manton says it well:

“We know God but as men born blind know the fire: they know that there is such a thing as fire, for they feel it warm them, but what it is they know not.  So, that there is a God we know, but what He is we know little, and indeed we can never search Him out to perfection; a finite creature can never fully comprehend that which is infinite.”

We are to seek to know the unknowable. That should promote a bit of humility.

In his wonderful book Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, Frederick Buechner writes the following about theology:

“Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study man and his ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”

One of the criticisms leveled at those in the Reformed camp is that there tends to be a scholastic arrogance that oozes from their pores. A little over the top but not far from the mark. Eliot Grudem, a pastor at Mars Hill in Seattle, wrote an article called “Elect or Elite? Why Arrogance Has No Place in Reformed Theology” in which he addressed this issue. In the article he quoted J.I. Packer from his introduction to John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ:

“To Calvinism there is really only one point to be made in the field of soteriology: the point that God saves sinners.”

That includes me. And you. There is no room for boasting and even if tempted to do so we should boast in nothing but the cross of Christ! (Gal. 6:14)  Christian men of scholarship should be oozing nothing but humility.

In reading Calvin’s Institutes (Kindle Edition) I was encouraged by a part of his discourse on the subject of “election” in which he cautions us to remember our limits.

“The subject of predestination, which in itself is attended with considerable difficulty is rendered very perplexed and hence perilous by human curiosity, which cannot be restrained from wandering into forbidden paths and climbing to the clouds determined if it can that none of the secret things of God shall remain unexplored. For it is not right that man should with impunity pry into things which the Lord has been pleased to conceal within himself, and scan that sublime eternal wisdom which it is his pleasure that we should not apprehend but adore, that therein also his perfections may appear.” (1)

He continues:

“… the moment we go beyond the bounds of the word we are out of the course, in darkness, and must every now and then stumble, go astray, and fall. Let it, therefore, be our first principle that to desire any other knowledge of predestination than that which is expounded by the word of God, is no less infatuated than to walk where there is no path, or to seek light in darkness. Let us not be ashamed to be ignorant in a matter in which ignorance is learning. Rather let us willingly abstain from the search after knowledge, to which it is both foolish as well as perilous, and even fatal to aspire. If an unrestrained imagination urges us, our proper course is to oppose it with these words, “It is not good to eat much honey: so for men to search their own glory is not glory,” (Prov. 25:27).

These are words worth heeding. They are words that admit the limitations of finite men in the face of an infinite God. They are words that call for the sure boundaries of revealed scripture and boundaries upon the curiosity driven by pride in knowledge.
Now Calvin insists that we do not keep from people what can be known about the subject and, indeed,  to do so would be to deprive the saints. Yet, his call for humility is unmistakable. Wisely he states:

“Let us, I say, allow the Christian to unlock his mind and ears to all the words of God which are addressed to him, provided he do it with this moderation – viz. that whenever the Lord shuts his sacred mouth, he also desist from inquiry. The best rule of sobriety is, not only in learning to follow wherever God leads, but also when he makes an end of teaching, to cease also from wishing to be wise.”

John Chrysostom said that a comprehended God is no God at all. The Sovereign God of Heaven and Earth is, without question, incomprehensible. Even so, He has chosen to reveal Himself to us in nature, in scripture and in the face of Jesus Christ. May we press on to know Him. May we with humility seek  to know His character and understand His ways and may we extend much grace to our fellow travelers who seek the same, knowing that it is a wonder that we understand anything at all.

(1) All quotes from : Calvin, John; Beveridge, Henry (2011-01-26). Institutes Of The Christian Religion (pp. 607-609). Kindle Edition.

If you listen to audio books at all, then don’t miss this month’s freebie at Christian Audio. They are offering the classic J.I. Packer book “Knowing God” for free. Get it. Listen to it and then listen again! Listen with your Bible open. You will gain more from Packer’s study than I can possibly say.  http://christianaudio.com/free/

“In the New Testament, grace means God’s love in action toward people who merited the opposite of love. Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves. Grace means God sending his only Son to the cross to descend into hell so that we guilty ones might be reconciled to God and received into heaven.”
? J.I. Packer, Knowing God

So, at long last I am reading through Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion.” Reading through is probably less than accurate. It’s assigned work for a course I’m taking and won’t cover every chapter. Even so, I do want to interact with what I read and reflect on what I’m hearing through its pages.

The Institutes is made up of four books, each with a multitude of chapters. The first book is called “Of the Knowledge of God the Creator.”  God is first revealed as a creator (prior to revelation as redeemer) and man is the creation in relationship with which he most clearly reveals His character.  For Calvin, no true understanding of man can be arrived at without first contemplating “the face of God.” It is only in light of His glory that we understand the realities of our own humanity.

The difficulty we face is the corruption of our humanity by sin and so we settle for far less than the true knowledge of God. That we have “fallen short of the glory of God” (Rm. 3:23) is a statement that is short in words, but an abyss in reality. Our nature is to look to ourselves as the standard of what is good, wise and honorable but in doing so we hold to a completely false idea.

“For, since we are all naturally prone to hypocrisy, any empty semblance of righteousness is quite enough to satisfy us instead of righteousness itself.” (IOTCR p. 5 Kindle Edition)

Calvin insists that we must look to God first in order to obtain any clear understanding of ourselves.  He uses our eyesight as an  illustration to show that when we think our eyesight is accurate and dependable, one look at the sun shows us that our eyes are insufficient for dealing with such brilliance: “…when we look up to the sun, and gaze at it unveiled, the sight which did excellently well for the earth is instantly so dazzled and confounded by the refulgence, as to oblige us to confess that our acuteness in discerning terrestrial objects is mere dimness when applied to the sun.” (IOTCR p. 5 Kindle Edition).

No less is our vision dimmed in relationship to our Creator. Our appetite is ruined. Our joy has no true object. We honor shadows that we insist are reality.  Here is Calvin at length:

“So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of Being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity.” (IOTCR p. 5 Kindle Edition)

In our day, when the gospel of self-esteem in the preferred religion of the world and much of the church, thoughts such as these find a small audience. Yet, without this understanding  we will always be “learning (yet) never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” (2 Tim 3:7) I remember being chided in the past for using the song “At the Cross” in worship. How horrid that we, the children of God, would use a word like “worm” to describe ourselves! But when it comes to gazing at the “The Sun of righteousness.” (Mal. 4:2), what language should you use?  Can anything but the deepest humility help us to even begin the contemplation of His glory?

“And what can man do, man who is but rottenness and a worm, when even the Cherubim themselves must veil their faces in very terror?” (IOTCR p. 5 Kindle Edition)

“The church, when it’s not seduced by consumerist spirituality, is in the business of cultivating ordinary Christians, people who are united to Christ by faith and are in it for the long haul, like people in a good marriage. It transforms people, nor by giving them life-changing experiences but by repetition, continually telling the story of Christ so that people may hear and take hold of him by faith. For we do not just receive Christ by faith once at the beginning of our Christian lives and then go on to do the real work of transformation through our good works. We keep needing Christ the way hungry people need bread, and we keep receiving him whenever we hear the gospel preached and believe it. So what transforms us over the long haul is not one or two great life-changing sermons (although these can be helpful from time to time) but the repeated teaching and preaching of Christ, Sunday after Sunday, so that we never cease receiving him into our hearts.”

Phillip Cary – Good News for Anxious Christians, (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2010), p.133

“Doing justice means not showing partiality, not stealing, not swindling, not taking advantage of the weak because they are too uninformed or unconnected to stop you. We dare say that most Christians in America are not guilty of these sorts of injustices, nor should they be made to feel that they are. We are not interested in people feeling bad just to feel bad, or worse, people thinking there is moral high ground in professing most loudly how bad they feel about themselves. If we are guilty of injustice individually or collectively, let us be rebuked in the strongest terms. By the same token, if we are guilty of hoarding our resources and failing to show generosity, then let us repent, receive forgiveness, and change. But when it comes to doing good in our communities and in the world, let’s not turn every possibility into a responsibility and every opportunity into an ought. If we want to see our brothers and sisters do more for the poor and the afflicted, we’ll go farther and be on safer ground if we use grace as our motivating principle instead of guilt.”

- Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert