Ferguson, Jensen, Mohler, and Sproul: Questions and Answers #3

yesterday we had a question regarding the openness of God issue and RC and others made some pretty clear statements about that but a question came back to us today and I think since you are a seminary president you'd be a good man to respond to this how can these issues find a place in evangelical seminaries how do these issues find their that the place for it to be taught and and to ferment in these areas and are there any other crucial areas about the boundaries of evangelicalism that are concerned for you today as a seminary president let me say first of all I appreciate you taking that as a concern yesterday and let me say the onset that evangelicals need to make a decision here pretty quickly as to how great a threat open theism is in my judgment we are at an I see a moment and if this is not judged rightly and if Orthodox biblical theism is not embraced and defended and explicitly defended against this heresy and I'll use that word very specifically then I believe we're going to see the dissolution of evangelical theology because if this is allowable anything is allowable but you ask a larger question and that is how this happens let me just say this the natural inclination of an institution because of the logic of institutionalism is to move to the left towards greater accommodation with the world it takes absolutely no energy whatsoever for a Christian institution to move leftward and that's why we see that the tragedy for instance says in the book the dying of the light by James Byrd's tale of how virtually every major Christian college and university has ended up disassociated from an alien to the churches that gave it birth now for theological seminaries this is particularly acute and I have to speak not only philosophically but autobiographically what happened at Southern Seminary humanly speaking could not have happened without bust confessionalism the confession of faith that our founders put in place in 1859 was there it had been rejected but never disallowed it had never been taken out of the Charter it had been ignored it had been compromised but it was there and in my election I was able to make clear that we are a confessional institution and that means the confession regulates and that means that if you teach not in accordance with or if you keep teach contrary to you forfeit your teaching position now as you may know that that led to almost a complete turnover in the faculty and yet that's just what needed to take place but a confession of faith we need to be reminded from church history that Creed's and confessions often answer specific problems Nicaea did Cal Seton did goes all the way down Southern Baptists revised our confession of faith the Baptist faith and message last year meeting right here in Orlando and one of the issues we had to address was the doctrine of God and so we explicitly put in our confession of faith and affirmation of God's exhaustive foreknowledge including the future decisions of his creatures now that means makes it as now that that issue for instance is now a matter of confessional obligation to all who accept employment in our seminaries etc if we are not explicit then that accommodation will come and we should not be surprised but the big issue and you asked the question the core of it is if we are not confessional as' then everything is up for negotiation and as soon as you open the negotiation something like the sovereignty of God will be the first thing to go when we saw I'll become elevated to the president of the seminary there were three things that were extraordinary about that one that a man who was Orthodox and his theology would at that point in history ascend to that position to that he would be only 33 years old when he went there but the most astonishing thing was he hadn't even gone to college yet we know that because he mentioned that he became familiar with my teaching while still in college you see how thin some skin can be there I can't have a pod just saw a picture of an old man that I didn't recognize oh great well thank you for a definitive answer and it was spoken to strongly yesterday - but your position as the seminary president really helps to around that question out Sinclair RC people have asked last night Alistair seemed to make a strong point of imputed holiness from Hebrews 12:14 as he concluded there you want to respond to that the question was would there be a response from RC or Sinclair to that strong statement well I don't want to speak for Alistair on ought not to but I think the point that he was he was trying to make as a point that different Christians have expressed in different language the most helpful description I've found paradoxically comes from The Scotsman John Murray that's a joke we can tell the Scottish jokes are rarely funny that coming from a man with the name sail hammer if you let if you would listen to some of the verses Alistair used last night the thing that ought to have struck you first of all is that we're accustomed to speaking about sanctification as an ongoing process and most literature most teaching on sanctification that isn't of the higher life variety is sanctification as a process and one of the things that if you would listen carefully to these verses and many other verses in the New Testament you would notice is that the the the verb to sanctify in the New Testament is almost always used in the past tense it's relatively rarely used to describe a process it's characteristically used to describe something that has actually happened to the believer which is why I over against nominal Christians we have no difficulty in speaking about each other as Saints the nominal Christian regards sainthood as an eval elevated form of Christianity at the end of a long process the New Testament regards sainthood as definitive of what it means to be a Christian it means that you have been set apart for Jesus Christ and one aspect of that that Alistair was I think expressing last night is the idea that there is a sanctification which john murray speaks about us being definitive right at the very beginning of the Christian life and it's so important for us in making progress in the Christian life to realize the inner sense no matter how severe the battles are the war the fundamental war in the life of the believer has already been won we don't live the Christian life in the hope of victory but we live the Christian life on the basis of Christ actually no this is a bit like Al's question how long have we got to answer a button term maybe briefly I can try and answer it by saying this artifact the other day - Colossians 3:1 2:16 the pattern Lepore uses in Colossians 3:1 2:16 particularly interesting because I think he's speaking over against a false view of sanctification which involves certain kinds of experiences and also certain kinds of seven quick steps they involved certain kinds of treatment of the body response to angels humiliations and all the rest of it and he responds to that by saying but if you're gonna make progress in the Christian life and he's speaking to people that I suspect like many of us had that such are our bars of deliverance at the beginning of our Christian lives that it is a sharp to us to discover how sinful we still are and that's why so often young Christians are prey to everything that comes down the pike that says are you struggling well you know let's give you the plus that will get you past this struggle and what Paul says is the first thing you need to realize is that you become a new creation in Christ he says you've to set your hearts and minds and the things that are above because you've died with Christ you've been raised with Christ in some sense when Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father you your true life ascended there with Christ and your life now is hidden with Christ in God and you're so United to Christ that when Christ appears he cannot appear but you will also appear with him that union with Christ is fundamental then he says to the way in which we put off the old saw he says that for because that's true not in order that it may be true but because that's true put to death the sins of the flesh and put on the characteristics of Christ now can I go on then I think in order to fill that out you need to slip over to what he says in Romans 6 where he's saying to the Roman Christians don't you realize what baptism says about you what it says about you is that through faith in Christ you've been united to Christ in his death the old man has been crucified and you have died to sin so there's not an exhortation they are die to sin or go on dying to sin he's saying you have died to sin and because you have died to sin it would be inconsistent with what you actually are to go on living in sin and it's on that basis I think that I found Marie's language which is unique to him although it expresses something that goes away back I think into into the roots of biblical teaching it's important for us to realize that all progressive sanctification is based on this definitive sanctification which is a once and for all reality and that's why Luther you know used to say when he was struggling he would say I'm a baptized man not because he he held to a Roman view of baptism because he was reminding himself that he was no longer under the Dominion of sin the presence of sin was still there but the Dominion of sin the reign of sin the Paul speaks about in Romans 5:12 to 21 and through the whole of 6 has once and for all been broken we are liberated from land now it's in the light of man that we go on with the struggles and if I can use this one illustration oscar pullman the european theologian used a very famous illustration about the work of christ in which he spoke about the second world war and the difference between d-day and v-day d-day came before I was born 1944 1944 and that was the Desai's a victory of the Second World War logically the Second World War was over there there were multitudes of men killed in battle between 1944 and 1945 so the d-day had come but the VDA had not yet arrived and Kuhlmann applies that to the work of Christ the d-day came in Christ's death and resurrection and ascension the victory is won that's the decisive battle over but the publication of that victory is the date of which we are looking and there's an an analogy a parallel a kind of miniature of that in the Christian life d-day was the day in which we were brought into the new creation the Dominion of sin was broken we're no longer under the snare of Satan but a presence of sin still there there's a lot of warfare going on we feel it all the more keenly but the progress that we make is in the light of the victory towards the consummation of the victory and glorification sorry to take so long no that's a complete answer appreciate that and RC you might want to join in on that a little bit but let me give you another question from someone that I think possibly speaks to the same question what then is the believers relationship to the old testament law of God how does this concern his or her growth in holiness well quickly on the first question Martyn lloyd-jones was asked once why he hadn't preached through the book of Romans and he said because he didn't understand Romans six and he wasn't going to do it until he did and I could feel his pain on that but I'm glad that that's where Sinclair went with Allison allister's concept of imputed holiness because in that metaphor of death and resurrection that Paul uses in Romans 6 he uses the language of imputation reckon yourself count yourself dead to sin and alive in Christ and the reason why we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ is because we have been liberated from the bondage of sin chapter five and and we have been raised by the power of the Holy Ghost and the power of the Resurrection to newness of life now with respect to the second part how that relates to the Old Testament I don't think anybody's ever really improved on Calvin's threefold use of the law where he says the first use of the law is to reveal the character of God and insofar as the law reveals the character of God it functions as a mirror to us that is Calvin said even holy men so to speak in ancient days as long as they kept their gaze horizontal bound to this world they could think of themselves as slightly less than demigods and flatter themselves for their great achievements until once they lifted their gaze to heaven and saw what kind of being God was then they would quake in terror as they were awakened to their sinfulness and when I look into the mirror of the law it is the most profound mirror that reveals every wart and defect in my life and that is not only so initially and of course the second part of the first use of the law is the pedagogical use of the law where the law becomes the schoolmaster that drives us to Christ once the law reveals to us our sinfulness you know it it flee and makes us flee for safety for refuge for redemption to the gospel so that's why we preach law and gospel because the law drives us to the gospel the second you see gives us the use of restraint even though Paul talks about when the law comes it's an incentive to sin for some people all you have to do to get him to want to send more is to tell them they're not allowed and yet at the same time the divine law does exercise some restraint upon us but the most important is what's called the whoops I almost used the Latin I promise not to the third use of the law will give you a dispensation that is the Latin alright the tercius useless or the third use of the law which is the let the revelatory function of the law and this is the thing I don't understand why any Christian would which would chafe against this that the law reveals what that which in which God delights and you read thee in the SAMS in the Old Testament there's first samuel first sam second sam then there's the 23rd sam but all kinds of same thing where the where the weather samus says oh how I love your law and that psalmist who cries out oh how I love your law is a man who was justified by faith and by faith alone because Paul Labor's in Romans three and four the justification is the same way in the New Testament as it was in the Old Testament but godly people in all ages still meditate in the law day and night and they love the law of God because the law reveals what is pleasing to God and though I'm not underneath the burden of the law under the judgment of the law or any of that anymore I still am called to imitate God and to live a life that is pleasing to him and there's no better way to find out what the the handbook on what pleases God than by meditating on his law day and night so the Old Testament law has a profound value in the life of the Christian alright anybody else want to join in on that can I just add something that struck melody I was in a bookstore and I saw a book by Stephen Covey 7 7 secrets of successful people a number one bestseller when it comes from a man but God's given us the 10 secrets of a simple holy life and it's astonishing to me that the very Christians who will go and make Stephen Covey's book a best-seller become so edging that God could have given and continues to give 10 secrets of a holy life it's just I think it's a revelation of where we are as Christians actually you're stimulating this Baptist down here it doesn't take much but one of the realities of the transformation of the modern world is rebellion against God is that we have a totally artificial notion of what law is anyway I mean for instance the mythology of modernity would be that the children of Israel were having a great time in the wilderness unrestrained by the law I mean they were enjoying adultery and fornication and disobedience to parents and all the rest and then comes down Moses bearing the reflected Shekinah glory of God with the tablets and the party was over that is the modern mythology that's the way the modern world would think meanwhile how did the children of Israel receive the law of God well for instance around them were some peoples who were following gods who would like the Baal worshippers slice themselves and lacerate their bodies thinking the God to be pleased by watching them bleed there were the followers of Moloch who thought that what God demanded of them was that they take their infants and burn them and Moses came down bearing the glory of God reflected and he came down with what in the Hebrew were these ten words and he said we now know what God requires of us and it isn't our bleeding and it isn't our infants it is our obedience and these laws are for our good and that runs completely counter to the modern mind that these laws are for our good always yes one short comment that I'm going to part the waters here and let rosemary who's sitting here so politely get into this kiss I see one real quick thing is that one of those responsibilities I have had in seminary teaching and still at Knox seminary is to teach Christian ethics and historically the way I used to teach Christian ethics was through ethics as a subset of philosophy and go into the philosophical foundation for ethical theory and so on and a few years ago I abandoned that I said if you want to learn Christian ethics you study the Decalogue I just wanted a second what he just said and that's the way we approach it now which the whole course on the 10 commandments and their application to the Christian life rosemary two questions for you right off the bat here one is written by a youngster I think in but I it's a question I think that everybody in the room has and I want to ask it very sensitively because I don't know the answer to it but the question is in telling your story yesterday did your sister live her microphone is not on I'm sorry I forgot to tell you all that she did live and and I'll explain a little bit more I'm one of six children and my sister who was saved Cecil and my self were the two out of the six who ended up in the mission field and in the leadership of the Bible Study Fellowship years later so God did take my mother up on both those lives how many times you've been asked that in the last 24 hours I realized that was one mistake that I surely made yesterday who's not telling everybody about that right plenty well people were listening thank you another question comes from could be someone who's a student Bible Study Fellowship student what has been the response to be SF's introduction of reform ideas in the last year's study notes the response has been overwhelmingly good in my opinion because it has deepened the the understanding of the scripture in BSF like nothing ever has in BSF i'm convinced event there were many people who said to me rosemary you put romans into BSF and because you're working in interdenominational group where we don't try to criticise anyone denomination or anyone belief people just come and they study the Bible that's what BSF says to people and they say you put this into BSF curriculum and you will find that people will leave BSF in droves and I prayed heavily about this and of course Jim Boice and I were working together on it putting the materials together and there's no question that it was with somewhat fear and trembling especially when I was warned I think by our board of directors that this might do some damage to the BSF board and because this was just a couple of years ago that we had it and as you know I've been I had said it several times yesterday that the director of BSF for 20 years and this was I knew was going to end my or be near the end of my career anyway as the director of BSF because I'd already made a decision to leave in last year in the year 2000 I said to our Board of Directors he said rosemary is this really what you want to do and I said to them well yes that I believe that this is what God has for BSF and this is the hill that I am willing to die on and so we put it in and the response has been wonderful and I will say this too that as I have talked to a number of you at this conference that you are here wanting to know more about the holiness of God the high view of God because you're in Romans in vsf year before last well thank you for responding to that question there were some did some who left but I think most of them have come back from what I understand that that and I'm grateful for that are see a question comes according to Luther the Scriptures teach the centrality of the sacraments and sanctification what part do baptism and the Lord's Supper play in holiness the pursuit of holiness these guys are complaining we don't have enough time now it's my turn to complain we don't know and we have to be done by 10:00 all right all right now I'm teaching through the Westminster Confession of faith at our Sunday morning adult class at our church or summit eighth of the month or I hear you I've been doing it for three and a half years just in chapter 27 but we're right now working through the sacraments and one of the neat things last week was we had the first segment on baptism in the adult class at 9 o'clock 9 at 10:00 and then they're in the worship service it starts 10:30 tomorrow morning for all of you who are planning to come we had an adult baptism there which is always one of my favorite things in in the church and and I was saying to the people there that this is something every time we see a baptism we are seeing not a magical act but we are seeing an external dramatization of the promise of God to his people and we call it a sign and a seal whereby the king of the universe puts his mark upon a person and in an external seal just like the spirit internally seals us to the day of redemption and it's like what st. Claire quoted from Luthor a few moments ago if really believe god's promises which are by faith and the world and the flesh and the devil assaults you and you begin to to to tremble inside and and and waver in your confidence it's time to look at those signs and look at those seals and say I'm baptized I have the mark of Christ in my body from the promise of God because again baptism is not a sign of my faith or my parents faith it's a sign of his promise and that's how Christians live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God and not only does he give us that word verbally but he corroborates that word with the sacraments not only of the sacrament of baptism but also the Lord's Supper where we come together to show forth the Lord's death and we remember the most important moment in our lives the moment where our where our Lord made his atonement for our sins but again the celebration of the Lord's Supper doesn't just look backwards but it's also a sign and seal of God's promise of our participation in the wedding feast of the Lamb where we are can we show forth the Lord's death until he comes and until we sit down with him in glory at his table and in the meantime he is present with us I've believed deeply in the real presence of Christ and the Lord's Supper not in the corporeal sense but in the spiritual sense but it's real and so thank you we come together at the Lord's table and we meet with Jesus there and you say how important is that to your sanctification Wow I mean these really are means of grace means by which God strengthens our souls and strengthens our understanding of his word and of his promise by which we live anybody else want to jump in on that anyone want to jump out well let me just say you would never know that for most of angelical worship where attention to baptism and the lord's table are peripheral at best marginalized in most churches and often just for funk tree and these are symbols and signs I would never use the word mere they're something far more than that and they are to remind us who we are because they are about who God is and again our worship is for something has become so trivialized you just wouldn't know what RC said is the case in most of angelical churches I just I wish we had time to discuss this more because it's so interesting because I I'd want to ask you do you think that's how Luther understood that or is this your 500 year later explanation to us of what Luther meant yeah I think it's what was there meant you okay yes it it we we can't drift into this but if you read what Calvin says on the Lord's Supper it will blow your mind away absolutely blow your mind away i we have we've started having an early morning communion in our church we we used to come in the Scottish tradition you of the Lord's Supper twice a year and so in in our churches we have struggled to increase the number of times that we have the Lord's Supper and so now in our congregation we have a once a month or was the first Sunday of the month but at three different times and one of those times were total novelty in in our denomination is to have it before the morning service and I had just one of the sweetest moments of my life a couple of weeks ago because there's a fellow in our church who's married to a Christian girl who came to faith of the Lord's Supper after being around the charge for 17 years and I don't know whether this was what drew him but at those services I just try and open my heart a little about what the Lord's Supper means and I was speaking about how in in the times of the fathers they used to speak about the Lord's Supper as the kiss of Christ now what's our kiss those of us who love someone else who are married I sometimes used to say to students if you don't think the Lord's Supper is a communicative significant sign go home this afternoon and say to your wife I love you and then for the next five years keep telling her that you love her but don't ever kiss her and she will one day burst out in frustration you keep telling me that you love me but you never kiss me now that's something deep in our human experience that we have signs not only that point to absent realities but communicate present realities if I give our sea a good English handshake or a hug I'm not pointing him to an absent reality I'm communicating and he's receiving the affection but I feel for him and the affection he has for me and that's what the Lord's Supper is and it's that nourishment of our communion with Christ as in the Lord's Supper or in Baptism he kisses us and says I love you and he displays in these signs the way that he loves us that provides us with a nourishment that enables as in the progress of holiness to keep on going I suppose all of us who are here we have had occasions of the Lord's table I have I had one occasion of the Lord's table when I was a teenager that has nourished me now for over 30 years and that's why the confession teaches I guess every solid confession would teach this that the efficacy the power of baptism of our supper are not tied to the moment of administration any more than the efficacy of the wordless preach is tied to the hour in which we are hearing the world the efficacy of the preaching of this conference by God's grace will last on and on and on and in the same way the efficacy the the kiss of Christ to us in the Lord's Supper and in Baptism is something that lasts and lasts so much and that's why I think it's so important for our salvation I think it's interesting listening listening this morning I thought I wish we could have renewing your mind on radio in Scotland because it would bring us back to the time of the Reformation and the time of the early fathers and the time of the early church where the Christians were exposed I suspect in Ephesus when Paul had the lecture hall of Tyrannus those are the Western tradition of Acts 19 indicates that he taught there for five hours a day for almost three years that's what the father stood that's what Luther and Calvin did day after day they were preaching the word and they were constantly administering the Lord's Supper and we've lost both the exposition of the truth of the gospel to the mind that transforms the believer and the two dramas of the gospel the God has given us and we've substituted all kinds of things for the preaching of the word and now we're in the process of substituting all kinds of dramas for the two dramas of the Gospels good point and you know that's why I think Isles point so important Sinclair you need to know that there are two lovely ladies here from Glasgow we met them this one from springboard is it spring Burns Spring Don say it after me Paul Spring bung Spring burn and we met them there right back there and they have come had to come all the way to America to meet you so would you look for them yes yes please come up and say hello to me we are done but I just have to sneak in one question to Rosemary to finish I think a word of encouragement to a woman at the conference who says how do you reconcile your own call to holiness with a spouse who is a true believer but not as enthusiastic about that pursuit as as I am oh but he is he is he is enthusiastic as I am he just has a different way of expressing it my husband is a doctor he has given of his service and the medical field for years and years he is wonderfully supportive of me but I have been supportive of him all my life when we married we were both in the military he was a major and I was a second lieutenant and he came up to me and he ordered me to marry him and I said yes sir and he has outranked me ever since what the questioner wasn't talking about you specifically because we know your husband is supportive enthusiastic but the question was asking what if you have a husband that isn't oh but I'm glad you took that tacker we'd have never known about your military career that's now I need to salute when I see you how would you encourage another I would encourage someone whose husband is not as enthusiastic to not do what many people say to women and the is just be quiet and submissive and just do you know and never say anything to your husband I wouldn't say that to you whoever you are out there I would say your calling is to God first and that you do submit to your husband as long as it is in the Lord and that you do continue to encourage him but you do it in a way and which he knows that this is something that is very meaningful to you and if he loves you he wants to know what is in your heart and what really means something to you and so you tell him about those things let him know your person and then you certainly pray for him do not I will say very carefully about this do not be super spiritual because he knows you anyway Thank You rosemary Thank You al Thank You Sinclair and RC let's thank all four of them for their response to our questions and for the great

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 23,370

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: Openness of God, Old Testament Law, Mosaic Law, spiritual growth, sacraments, pursuit of holiness, God (Deity)

Id: UcUWcPdXGUo

Length: 41min 23sec (2483 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 26 2013