Spiritual or Carnal?

 Why are some “Christians” seemingly disinterested in the spiritual life? Does Scripture support two classes of Christians, carnal and spiritual? How long must I struggle with sin in my life? Consider:

1. Spiritual maturity is always a goal to be achieved, not a quality that we possess (Eph 4:13; Philip 3:12-16). Maturity is a process in you, not a character trait of you. Until we are glorified in Christ’s presence, we live between two tensions expressed in this phrase: “always aspiring but never attaining.” In this life we will always be aware of our sinful tendencies and inclinations (2 Cor 11:29; 1 Tim 1:16; Jm 3:2; 1 Jn 1:8), we will occasionally falter, but regularly seek forgiveness, and gradually grow by the power of God within us. That is the biblical reality of our human condition. We are a work in progress. But, we God’s work that will progress!
2. It follows, therefore, that while it is true every believer has been “washed” and “sanctified” (1 Cor 6:11), it is equally true that every believer is characterized by varying degrees of holiness and sinfulness. Hence, the terms “spiritual” and “carnal” apply in some measure to all of us.

Sin, for those truly born of God, is episodal not habitual (1 Jn 1:8-10; 3:9). In every case where sinful patterns persist, they are always condemned and never condoned (cf., Heb 5:12-14). Therefore, the popular designation “carnal Christian” may be true of genuine believers temporarily but not true of genuine believers indefinitely (1 Jn 2:4). If there is a group of “Christians” who are “carnal/worldly,” Scripture clearly does not support it or see it as the “norm.” It is an aberration from biblical standards (1 Cor. 3:1-4). Although sin never leaves us after regeneration(1 Jn 1:8), we have no excuse for being slaves to sin. What changes after regeneration is our relationship to sin. Before Christ we were dominated by sin, whereas after Christ we are now dominated by the Spirit (Rom 6:6-7, 14, 17-18; 8:12-14; Gal 5:22-24). We have a new master. The Spirit’s domination is not coercive, however, but graciously and lovingly subdues our wills to want to do the things that please God.

We Are Not Saved by Faith Alone!

Read this excellent post by C Michael Patton and receive 2 credit hours in Historical Theology! Well…. not really, but it is a fine post that offers a good summary of some important distinctions between Calvinist and Arminian soteriologies. See DO CALVINISTS REALLY BELIEVE IN SALVATION BY FAITH ALONE? An important highlight, Patton notes: it is grace that saves; it is faith that justifies. Ergo, faith does not save us. Grace does.

On a related thought, what about water baptism? If grace alone saves and faith alone justifies, then what about those who insist upon water baptism as a means of salvation? Do they have the Gospel message wrong? If baptism is a necessary condition for entering into a relationship with God, then did Calvin get it wrong and Augustine, Aquinas, and Luther get it right? Put differently, either baptism is required for salvation or it is not. We cannot have it both ways. Both camps would agree that grace and faith are required, but some insist that water baptism is part of the Gospel message and a necessary step for entrance into a relationship with God. What do you think?

Credo or Paedo Baptism?

Justin Taylor has a fine post on why credo-baptism is more persuasive biblically than is paedo-baptism.

Check out The Fear of Baptizing Children.

See also my Against Baptismal Regeneration.

Christians for Biblical [Theo]logy

The most recent newsletter from Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) has this piece that I find important, so it is repeated below in its entirety.

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Imaging the Biblical God

J. R. Daniel Kirk (PhD), New Testament professor at Fuller Seminary Northern California, is an author, and he blogs daily at Storied Theology (http://jrdkirk.com). He will be speaking in April at the CBE Houston Conference, “A New Creation. A New Tradition: Reclaiming the Biblical Tradition of Man and Woman, One in Christ.“

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Rachel Held Evans has drawn attention to John Piper’s recent declarations that Christianity has a masculine feel, and that this is, of course, great news for everyone–even women, whose feminine feel isn’t, apparently, part of what God intended for Christianity.

Piper’s point is that God intentionally depicts himself in masculine imagery, and that this sets the character for what Christianity is: God is Father and Son, God is King not queen.

Let’s consider some ways that scripture leads us to see that Piper’s view is selective to the point of being misleading. Next week we’ll tackle a much more serious issue: the way that Piper reads the Gospels demonstrates a fundamental failure to understand the stories themselves.

The first indication we get in scripture of how the nature of God is represented by human gender is Genesis 1. When God creates humanity in God’s own image, we read, “Male and female he created them.”

This is significant for two reasons. First, in what is the clearest representation of God in human gender, perhaps the only clear and intentional connection in all of scripture, is that it is both male and female, together, who mirror God to the world.

This means that a “masculine” church or a church with a “masculine feel” is inherently lacking in its ability to reflect the image of God.

But Genesis 1 isn’t simply about “being like” God in some general way.

To bear the image of God is to be the person whom God has entrusted to rule the world on God’s behalf. The purpose of humanity, “Let them rule the world on our behalf,” is inseparable from the categorization of these creatures as those made “in the image of God.” In other words: it is not merely as humans that we reflect God together as male and female, but as those who rule over the world as male and female we bear the image of God. The kind of rule God has in mind is not a “masculine” rule, but a masculine plus feminine, male plus female, rule. Only this kind of shared participation in representing God’s reign to the world is capable of doing justice to the God whose image we bear.

Another dynamic of God, as God is reflected in the story of ancient Israel, is worth considering. As a religion without official goddesses, it falls to the one God to do the typically “feminine” duty of ensuring fertility.

In the ancient world, where being a woman was specially tied to bearing, nurturing, and rearing children, feminine images of God (and, of course, goddesses) were often tied to either literal or figurative bearing and nurturing of a people and/or of children.

This may lend some credibility to the idea that when the OT speaks of God as El-Shaddai it is employing feminine imagery. Although this is sometimes translated “God almighty,” other options have been suggested, including “God of the mountain.” But it’s worth noting that El-Shaddai is a term that appears in tandem with the covenant blessing of seed, offspring.

In Genesis 17:1, God self-identifies as El-Shaddai and then institutes the covenant of circumcision which is tied to the covenant promise of offspring. Why does Genesis 35:11 say, “I am El-Shaddai, be fruitful and multiply” (cf. Gen. 28:3)? Why this title for the God of fruitfulness and multiplication?

It has been argued that El-Shaddai is less a reference to God as all-powerful and more a reference to God as the one who grants fertility.

Genesis 49:25 reads:

by God, your father, who supports you,
by the Almighty (shaddai) who blesses you
with blessings from the skies above
and blessings
from the deep sea below,
blessings from breasts (shadayim) and womb.

It has been argued that shaddai is related to the Hebrew word for breasts. Although an alternative translation of shaddai has been “God of the mountains”–as someone who lives in a city with “twin peaks,” it seems to me that the options of “God of the mountains” and “God of the breasts” are not mutually exclusive.

In Genesis 49:25 we may very well have an intentional juxtaposition of God as Father and God as nursing mother. The God of Israel is the God of womb and breast as much as this is the God of war and rain.

El Shaddai is the God who makes God’s people fruitful and multiples them. This is the God of fertility.

And so, when we see the Son appear in all His glory in Revelation, we are, perhaps, not entirely surprised to find this:

“His breasts are girt up with a golden girdle” (Revelation 1:13)

Ok, we are surprised to find it. So surprised, in fact, that the translations won’t have it! But mastoi are breasts. (Thanks are due to Jesse Rainbow for his article on the Son of Man’s breasts in JSNT 30 [2007] 249-53.) The great warrior king of Revelation? It’s the Son of Man, prepared to be nursing mother.

So when Paul says that he and his fellow apostles were present among the Thessalonians like a nurse or mother, perhaps we should understand that there is something distinctly “feminine” about leading the church of God. And, that this femininity is part of what it means to bear the image of God and manifest the presence of Christ.

Who is the Father of our Bible? Who is the Son? It is not only the king and conqueror, but the nurturer and nourisher, the one who cares for and holds close. Not only (I should say, stereotypically) “masculine” but also the (stereotypically) feminine.

It is the God who is only rightly and fully imaged as male and female. Together.

Social Activism vis-à-vis Spiritual Activism

Growing up in Texas, I remember public laundry mats, restrooms, and drinking fountains with signs over them stating “Whites Only.” Shocking, I know. But very true and very sad. So much of our nation has been renewed and reformed by the costly efforts of Martin Luther King, Jr. Doubtless we’ve a long way to go for human rights and dignity to manifest more fully, yet so much of the distance we have traveled toward equality and justice for all is the result of the courageous activism of this one man, set off initially in 1955 by the heroic efforts of Ms. Rosa Parks, the same year I was born.

Today our nation celebrates this distance, and rightfully so. Social activism is important and I see no reason to be against it in toto (non-violent forms, that is), in so far as it is grounded in the moral authority that God has set down before us in Scripture. Though this day is a good reminder of what social activism can do for the good, it also reminds me what activism cannot do. It cannot yield eternal change wrought only by God. And so, I publish my statement on what God has actively done for us through the finished and all-sufficient spiritual activism of Christ our Savior. It is this that I celebrate.

Regeneration is that activity of God wherein he radically transforms the moral, mental, emotional, volitional, and relational fiber of a person through the unique work of the Holy Spirit. As in the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, this transformation is analogous to a new birth (see Jn. 3:3-7; 2 Cor. 5:17; Gal. 6:15; Jm. 1:18; 1:Pt. 1:3; 1 Jn. 2:29). Its start and finish is in God the Holy Spirit who alone brings it about without the agency of human activity (Jn. 1:13; 3:8). Value systems are wholly renovated not just altered. Old impulses and habits are replaced with new ones (Gal. 5:19-24; Col. 2:11-12) as a spiritual death takes place of the old self or nature (Gal. 2:20), which was dominated by sinful desires and activities (Rom. 6:1-11), and is replaced with a new spiritual life that is gradually but certainly renewed daily never to be corrupted (1 Pt. 1:4).

Furthermore, regeneration is God’s gracious means of cleansing from sin whereby the Spirit of God purifies the penitent person from moral corruption. The Apostle Paul states that regeneration is a work of God and not of humans (Rom. 4:4-5; Gal. 2:16-17; Eph. 2:4-5, 8-9). This purification or washing is actualized at the time of belief in the Lord Jesus as Savior and King when the Holy Spirit enters a believer’s life and is subsequently symbolized at the time of a believer’s baptism (Acts 10:47; Eph. 1:13; 1 Cor. 6:11; possibly Heb. 9:14; 10:22; 1 Pt. 3:21). Water baptism, therefore, is an expression of regeneration and was never seen as the means of it. We come to God with empty hands offering only our need (Lk. 18:13-14). Scripture affirms that any righteous activity not enabled by God is completely insufficient for acquiring a right standing before him (Is. 64:6; Phil. 3:8b-9).