Receiving
Christ
by Michael Horton
(from his out of print book In the Face of God)
God
not only takes it upon himself to save us from our guilt; he takes it upon
himself to restore us to life and to bring us to faith. In doing so, the riches
of Christ, secured at the cross, become ours.
We must understand
that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him,
all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains
useless and of no value for us….All that Christ possesses is nothing to us
until we grow into one body with him. 1
In other words, if there were no subjective
work of the Spirit in our hearts, all that we have considered up to this point
would remain beyond our reach. Christ’s redemptive work in history, objectively
won for us, would nevertheless be of no use apart from the work of the Holy
Spirit.
When we are united to Christ, we are
immediately made heirs of his righteous life. His thirty-three years of
complete consecration and total surrender to the divine will become our
identity before God. By his circumcision, we are set aside from the domination
of sin and made children of God. By his godly life and victory over temptation,
we who constantly fail and falter are regarded as holy and acceptable. This is
what it means to be identified with Christ’s life.
But there is a subjective aspect as well. In
this union, Christ’s life is not only his active obedience imputed, but his
holy life imparted. “I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener.” said
Jesus (John 15:1). “Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am
the vine: you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I
in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John
15:5).
Just as we are declared righteous in
justification, we are steadily made righteous in sanctification. We do not look
for the one in Christ and the other in something or someone else, even if that
someone is the Holy Spirit. For all of our gifts are found in Christ. They are
given by the Father, in the Son, through the agency of the Holy Spirit.
We are not baptized into the Spirit, but into
Christ by the Spirit. We do not participate in the life of the Spirit, but in
the life of Christ by the life-giving power of the Spirit. All of the Spirit’s
activity has Christ as the reference point, and where the Spirit himself is
given center-stage, we can be certain that it is not the Holy Spirit who is
active in such settings. (John 15:26). We bear the “fruit of the Spirit” only
as we are in union with the Vine.
Our justification is perfect, complete, and
instantaneous. Sanctification, by contrast, is imperfect, incomplete, and
progressive throughout the Christian life. No believer can ever say that he or
she has achieved victory over sin, although Christ has accomplished this on the
believer’s behalf. His victory is imputed perfectly and instantly, while it is
experienced in the believer’s life only in perpetual conflict with our
still-sinful hearts. Thus, our union with Christ in the likeness of his life
means that we who once were at peace with our sins are at war with our sins. We
who were once satisfied with ourselves are now locked in perpetual battle with
our own wickedness and rebellion.
The objective work of Christ would profit us
nothing unless it were subjectively received. The historic events of our Lord’s
passion, death, and resurrection which secured our salvation must be
effectually applied by the Holy Spirit working in our hearts. But how is this
union secured? If it is not a matter of the soul’s direct and immediate access
to God’s Spirit, how can we possibly cross the infinite chasm between Creator
and creature?
HOW WE ARE UNITED TO
CHRIST
Sure,
God has come in human flesh, but that was two thousand years ago. How does he
come to me, today? That is the same as asking, with the Philippian
jailer, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” And what did Paul and Silas reply?
“Believe in the Lord
Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” Then they spoke the word
of the Lord to him and to all the others in his house. At the hour of the night
the jailer took them and washed their wounds; then immediately he and his
family were baptized.
Acts 16:30-33
In this response there were two “means of
grace” which the apostles employed for the salvation of the jailer. The first
was the word.
As we have seen in previous chapters, the Word
is divided into two parts – law and gospel. Everything in the Bible that tells
us how to live and issues threats for failing to conform to those commands is
“law.” Everything in Scripture that promises us eternal life on no other basis
than the free gift in Christ is “gospel.”
We can also express this in the biblical
language of “covenant.” In the beginning, God promised Adam and his posterity
eternal life on the condition of perfect obedience, of which Adam was then
capable [i.e He was not yet in bondage to the corruption of nature]. Having violated that covenant of works, however, Adam lost his power
of free will [i.e. left to himself, apart from the Holy Spirit, he refuses to believe]. Since then, every human descendant has been spiritually dead,
guilty, and incapable of fulfilling God’s law or covenant of works (I Cor.
After Adam’s disobedience, God established a
covenant of grace, promising Adam and all of his posterity who would trust in
his promise that a Mediator would cover their shame, just as the animal’s skin
had covered Adam’s nakedness. The covenant of works promises, “Do this and you
shall live,” while the covenant of grace promises, “Live and you shall do
this.” In the covenant of works, God demands perfect obedience. Christ fulfilled
the covenant of works as the Second Adam (Rom.5:1-21) so that sinners could be
received into God’s family through a covenant of grace.
It is this covenant of grace, or “gospel,”
that the apostles presented to the Philippian jailer.
This gospel is “the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes”
(Rom.
The apostles did not provide steps. They did
not explain how to appropriate God’s grace. They did not describe how to “make
Jesus Savior and Lord.” This all would amount to “law” –something for them to
do toward the attainment of their salvation, something for which they could
claim at least partial credit. The apostles’ message is simply, “Believe in the
Lord Jesus, and you will be saved—you and your household.” The household was
even included because, as in the Old Testament administration of this covenant
of grace, God still saves families and not merely individuals.
But there is a second means of grace that the
apostles appealed to in the conversion of the jailer. Not only did the jailer
need the Word to link him here and now to the saving events of history; he also
required the sacrament of baptism: “Then immediately he and all his family were
baptized” (v. 33). Throughout our discussion of union with Christ above, the
repeated references to baptism cannot be lightly dismissed. Gnostics of all
ages have insisted that this is not a literal baptism with water, but a spiritual
baptism. After all, if the Spirit works directly, why confine his work to such
base, earthly elements as water? Don’t rituals just get in the way?
The Gnostics preferred the “word” directly
spoken to the heart or spirit to the “dead letter,” and they twisted Paul’s
words to imply that the Bible was the “dead letter.” And as for the sacraments?
Those were rituals of a carnal institution, standing in the way of the spirit’s
direct communion with God.
THE SPIRIT AND THE
WORD
A
theology of glory rejects the weakness of preaching and the foolishness of the
gospel. Recently, a number of Christian campuses have reported revival. As I
have read case after case, one theme running throughout is the “testimony” that
the Spirit was working directly in these meetings. Students and faculty alike
appeared to applaud the fact that there was no preaching involved. “There
wasn’t even a preacher,” one student exults. “The Holy Spirit was doing it, not
some preacher.”
What is the assumption in such a comment? It
is that the Holy Spirit working directly and immediately (i.e. without means)
was superior to the Holy Spirit working through means. By circumventing the
Word—and especially the preached Word—the Holy Spirit was perceived more
intimately and powerfully involved.
Historic Protestantism has always emphasized
the preaching of God’s Word as sacramental. That is, it is not merely the
communication of information, but the effectual means of producing conversion.
God alone is the cause of the New Birth, but he calls women and men to himself
through the weakness of preaching.
Nowhere in Scripture do we find a pattern of
evangelism or revival in which individuals respond to the gospel by simply
being “zapped” by the Spirit. They are always responding to the preached Word.
It may be one-on-one, or in an assembly, but it is the Word proclaimed that
gives life to those spiritually dead. Furthermore, even after they are
converted, believers do not grow in their walk, deepen in their Christian
experience, or learn new truths by the direct activity of the Spirit apart from
God’s ordained means.
Apart from the Word, there is no salvation and
no activity of the Holy Spirit in the lives of God’s people. Where the Word is
rightly preached, the Spirit is active in power. Where the Word is not rightly
preached, the Spirit is not active in power. It is impossible to have a place
in which the Word is preached clearly (as the proclamation of Christ), where
the Spirit is absent in his power and saving strength. It is equally impossible
for the Spirit to be actively present if the preaching of Christ is not the
central focus.
The Reformers faced “the enthusiasts,” who
were heirs to many of the tendencies of the ancient Gnostics. They believed
that they knew a better way, a higher path, a secret
tunnel of the Spirit that was a short-cut. Luther, for instance, in a sermon on
Luke
True Christianity is not gained by sitting in
a corner, watching and waiting to be filled with heavenly revelation. Rather,
as we sit with other sinners in a church, hearing and believing the Word of God,
God comes to his people in intimate communion, self-disclosure, and redemption.
John Calvin declared, in his commentary on I Thessalonians 5:20,
It is an illusory
belief of the enthusiasts that those who keep reading Scripture or hearing the
Word are children, as if no one were spiritual unless he scorned doctrine. In
their pride, therefore, they despise the ministry of men and even Scripture
itself, in order to attain the Spirit. They then proudly try to peddle all the
delusions that Satan suggests to them as secret revelations of the Spirit.
Our own day is filled with examples of
contemporary enthusiasm, or what we would today call mysticism. Defending the
Keswick “Higher Life” vision of spirituality, a popular minister and writer
asserts, “Sermons are not God’s primary method for reaching people. People are his method for reaching
people.” However, it is not any kind of person the writer has in mind, but
“people who have discovered the wonderful Spirit-filled life.”2
Although the author defends the importance of
the Bible toward the end of the book, he urges, “God’s method for reaching this
generation, and in every generation is not preachers and sermons. It is
Christians whose lifestyles are empowered and directed by the Holy Spirit.”3
GOD’S PURPOSE FOR
PREACHING
Scripture
declares that “faith comes by hearing the message” (Rom.10:17), since “it (the
gospel) is the power of God unto salvation” (Rom.1:12). But those in our day
who emphasize the “higher life” in the Spirit often look for more immanent,
direct encounters. This is not a question of the inerrancy or importance of
Scripture. At the end of the day, one can hold a high view of Scripture in
principle, and still replace its sacramental power with other means of grace.
The underlying premise of such remarks is the
notion that relationships are more are more important than preaching the
apostolic truth. But to whom are we introducing people, to Christ or to
ourselves? Is the “Good News” no longer Christ’s doing and dying, but our own
“Spirit-filled” life? More sobering still, this implies that instead of the
Word as a means of grace, “victorious Christians” are themselves mediating
divine grace through the example of their own holiness. That makes us
sacramental, rather than the Word. This is not Good News, but this is what we
get whenever we stray from the preached Word as God’s means of grace.
Must we come to Christ and be united to him
through the earthly elements of ink and paper? It is not as if the Bible were
made of magical material. It is not its ink, paper, binding, and gilded edges
that distinguish it from any other literary classic. It is the message that is
miraculous. By the working of the Holy Spirit, the law actually brings people
to psychological, spiritual, and sometimes even emotional exhaustion. It
instills fear of God’s righteousness, holiness, and wrath, and it strips us of
all confidence in ourselves and in our own performance. The law slays us so
that we can be made alive in Christ.
Having left us stripped of our own fig leaves;
the law is followed by the gospel, “the power of God unto salvation,” that Word
of the cross that banishes our fear of death and wrath. When the Word is
preached, the Holy Spirit effects the New Birth through it. Furthermore, when
the minister is faithfully proclaiming the text, drawing on his careful study
of the original languages, possible alternative interpretations, and other
tools of pastoral scholarship, he is addressing Christ’s people in the voice of
God himself. The preached Word is the very address of our Judge, Redeemer, King
and Friend.
Far from denigrating the preached Word over
the Spirit’s direct “whisper” to the heart, the biblical accounts of
conversions link the Spirit to the Word in every case. For instance, in the
gospel accounts, people respond either in outrage or faith to Jesus’ teaching.
This preaching of the Word is the Spirit’s means of bringing whole crowds to
Christ. In fact, this is why Luther said it is difficult to preach the gospel
to ourselves.
Scripture is an announcement from God, and
therefore requires a messenger outside of us. Our tendency is to twist what we
read and deny its impact on our lives. But when we hear it preached by someone
else who stands outside our experience and the doubts and fears of our heart,
it has a far greater impact. Calvin agreed with this argument. He surmised from
the Scripture that it is more important to hear the Word preached in church
than to read it by oneself, although both are essential. After all, it was not
for nothing that Paul said, “Faith comes by hearing the Word of God.”
In Acts 2, it is in response to Peter’s sermon
that “those who accepted his message were baptized, and about three thousand
were added to their number that day” (v. 41). In fact, the whole purpose of
Pentecost was for the Spirit to empower his disciples to be Christ’s witnesses.
It is that same Word that brings individuals to Christ one-on-one.
Isaiah’s vision changed his life forever when
he realized that he was a sinner amidst a nation of lost sinners. After he was
forgiven, he cried out, “Lord, here am I, send me!” Later he would write, “How
beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who
proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to
Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’” (Isa. 52:7).
Paul picks up on this language in Romans 10,
making the preached Word essential for the Spirit’s work of regeneration: “How,
then, can they call on the one in whom they have not believed? And how can they
believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without
someone preaching to them? And how can they preach unless they are sent? As it
is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who
bring good news!’”(
THE WORD, RESTORING
LIFE
God
has determined to bring that Good News through specific means, and to involve
us in this drama. God the Creator of matter is not the enemy of God the
Redeemer of spirit. They are one and the same God, who uses the material things
in his creation—human language, water, bread and wine, ink and paper—to effect
miraculous spiritual transformation. He encounters us in words, and it is by
the telling and retelling of these stories of divine redemption that people are
reconciled to God and to each other.
The saving efficacy of this preached Word is
illustrated in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones. The Holy Spirit
brought the prophet to a valley filled with skeletons. God asked Ezekiel, “Can
these bones live?”
I said, ‘O Sovereign
LORD, you alone know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these dry bones and say
to them, “Dry bones, hear the word of the LORD! This is what the Sovereign LORD
says to these bones. I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. I
will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with
skin; I will put breath in you and you will come to life. Then you will know
that I am the LORD.”’
-Ezekiel 37:4-6
Ezekiel did as God had told him, prophesying
(i.e. preaching) to the valley of skeletons. Imagine how silly he must have
felt, standing on the edge of a cliff, preaching down to a cemetery. Even if it
was merely a vision, what a foolish vision! Yet, Ezekiel did as he was
commanded. “And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and
the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared
on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.” Another sermon
was required:
Then he said to me,
‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, “This is what the
Sovereign LORD says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these
slain, that they may live.”’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath
entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army. Then he
said to me, ‘Son of man, these bones are the whole house of
-Ezekiel 37:9-14
This is precisely what we are called to do.
While ministers are appointed by God to prophesy to the dry bones in an
official capacity, the priesthood of all believers requires us to prophesy, or
preach, to each other. After all, we cannot preach to ourselves. Even the
strongest believers find themselves looking away from the cross to themselves,
leaving their first love, forgetting the depth of their depravity and the
riches of God’s grace in Christ.
This is why we need someone outside of us,
external to our hearts, to our experience, to our inner lives, calling us to
look outside of ourselves to Christ. Even as Christians, we are tempted to
begin trusting in ourselves again, thinking that we can save ourselves with
God’s help. Either that, or we sink beneath the despair of ever finding peace
with God because of our ongoing sinfulness. Through a preacher, we find God
himself declaring his faithfulness to the covenant of grace.
Education—though it is despised by Gnostics
who feel that they have access to direct revelations—is indispensable. We
believe that the Holy Spirit will link us to Christ through the preached Word,
so we come with expectations of divine activity.
Too often, the preaching in many churches that
emphasizes the Word but ignores the Holy Spirit as the divine agent is dry and
dull. More like a lecture or a glorified Sunday school class, it lacks the
power and authority that comes when truth is not merely explained but proclaimed.
It is no wonder that many associated with the lecture-style rather than
proclamatory approach become so parched that they begin to look for water in
the mirages of popular spiritual fads.
And yet, as Jeremiah points out, there are
also opposite dangers when separating the Word and Spirit. The “lying prophets”
claim to receive special revelation.
Do not listen to what
the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak
visions from their own minds, not from the mouth of the LORD. …But which of
them has stood in the council of the LORD to see or to hear his word? Who has
listened and heard his word? …I did not send these prophets, yet they have run
with their message; I did not speak to them, yet they have prophesied.
-Jeremiah13:16-21
WHAT HAS THE LORD
SPOKEN?
Like
prophet, like people: “This is what each of you keeps on saying to his friend
or relative: ‘What is the LORD’s answer?’ or ‘What has the LORD spoken?’ But
you must not mention ‘the oracle of the LORD’ again,
because every man’s own word becomes his oracle and so you distort the words of
the living God, the LORD almighty, our God” (vv.35-36). The prophet warns of
divine judgment for those, whether prophet or people, who claim to hear from
the Lord outside of his revealed Word.
This warning was given during a period of
active revelation to prophets, when Scripture was still being written. How much
more does it apply to us today, after God has spoken fully and finally in his
Son (Heb.1:1)? If we are to see genuine awakening in our day, we must refuse to
separate what God has joined together. The Word without the Spirit would be
ineffective, and the Spirit without the Word is not the Spirit at all—but the
lying delusions of our own imagination and fallible minds.
It’s time we recovered our confidence in the
Word and Spirit once again. We must refuse to accept any version of
spirituality that seeks the Word without the life-giving Spirit or the Spirit
without the actual proclamation, teaching and doctrinal clarity of the actual
text of Holy Scripture. Apart from sound doctrine and lively preaching of
biblical truth, the Holy Spirit is silent; when that Word is faithfully
proclaimed, the Holy Spirit is at work. Then there comes a rattling sound, as
the bones come together one by one, forming an army of the Lord in the valley
of death.
THE SACRAMENTS--MEANS
OF GRACE
It
is one thing for an evangelical to believe that the Word is a means of grace.
It is quite another to add that the sacraments are a further means of grace.
Even the word “sacrament” sounds “Catholic” to many evangelical ears. In fact,
it is a biblical concept and enjoys a remarkably high place, next to the Word
itself, in Protestant confessions and catechisms. Observe the following
classical evangelical definitions. From the Lutheran tradition we discover the
following:
Our churches teach
that the sacraments were instituted not merely to be marks of profession among
men but especially to be signs and testimonies of the will of God toward us,
intended to awaken and confirm faith in those who use them.
-The
Article
XIII (1530)
The Reformed churches concur with this view of
the sacraments. The Scots Confession of
1560 declares,
And so we utterly
condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than
naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by baptism we are engrafted
into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins
are covered and remitted, and also that in the supper rightly used, Christ
Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our
souls. By this supper the Holy Spirit makes us feed upon the body and blood of
Christ once broken and shed for us but now in heaven, and appearing for us in
the presence of his Father. Notwithstanding the distance between his glorified
body in heaven and mortal men on earth, yet we must assuredly believe that the
bread which we break is a communion of Christ’s body and the cup which we bless
is the communion of his blood.
-Chapter 21
The Heidelberg
Catechism agrees with these definitions, and the Westminster Confession adds that
“Sacraments are holy signs and seals of the
covenant of grace.”
-Chapter 27
In every sacrament, two things are involved:
the sign and the thing signified. The sign in baptism, for instance, is water;
in the Lord’s Supper, bread and wine. The thing signified in baptism is
regeneration; in the Lord’s Supper it is the body and blood of Christ. As the Westminster Confession puts it, “There
is in every sacrament a spiritual relation, or sacramental union, between the
sign and the thing signified, whence it comes to pass that the nature and
effects of the one are attributed to the other.” (ibid).
In other words, the union between water and
regeneration is so close in baptism that Scripture will often speak of both
interchangeably, as if the water cleansed in baptism or as if the bread and
wine in communion were truly the body and blood of Christ. Thus, Paul speaks of
baptism as “the washing of regeneration” (Titus 3:5-8), and says that communion
with bread and wine is actually a participation in the body and blood of Christ
(I Cor.
When we are bound by this union of the Spirit
with his means of grace (word and sacrament), we are truly engaged in a “signs
and wonders” ministry. The signs are the written and preached Word, the water,
the bread and the wine. The wonders are the supernatural activities of the
Spirit that are attached to these signs.
The power or efficacy of sacraments does not
lie in their own nature. The efficacy lies in the Holy Spirit who marries them
to the spiritual treasures they signify. The same water that is used in baptism
could also be used to wash one’s hands and there would be no difference in the
substance of the water itself. Similarly, there is no change in bread and
wine—bread remains bread and wine remains wine. But when the Word and Spirit
join these common elements, God promises to be supernaturally present in order
to bestow his gifts. Sacraments, therefore, are not chiefly pledges of the
believer’s loyalty, but of God’s. This is why Calvin wrote, “In a sacrament, we
bring nothing of ourselves, but only receive.” They do not testify to the
earnestness of the convert, but to the earnestness of God in saving and keeping
his people by his grace.
This was a difficult concept for me, since I
was raised in circles where we believed that the significance of baptism and
the Lord’s Supper (indeed the sermon itself) was to stir us into response. In
other words, it was the emotion or piety these actions elicited, not the
heavenly gifts that God was giving to me through these means, that defined the
moment.
Baptism meant, “I have decided to follow Jesus.”
The Lord’s Supper meant, “I remember how much Jesus went through and how much I
should therefore do for him.” Both the preaching and these ceremonies focused
on my intense subjective experience and resolve to do better, rather than on
God and his objective grace in Christ. These activities were little more than
object lessons for my personal piety.
Although there certainly are emotional effects
of receiving the assurance of forgiveness and adoption, the biblical texts make
God’s grace, not my response, the big news. As the Heidelberg Catechism expressed it, the Holy Spirit creates faith in
our hearts by the preached Word, and confirms it through the sacraments.
It was for this reason that the Protestant
Reformers followed such great church fathers as
Someone will doubtless ask, “But if we’re
justified once and for all, why do we need to continue receiving forgiveness
and grace through the sacraments?” It is interesting that we do not ask this
question in relation to the Word. We know that we need to hear the gospel
preached more than once in our lives, that we need to continually hear God’s
assurance of forgiveness and pardon extended to us in our weakness and doubt.
The sacraments serve precisely the same purpose.
When we receive Holy Communion, we are
experiencing the joy of our intimate union with Christ just as surely as his
disciples enjoyed Christ’s presence in the upper room. Here, in Word and
sacrament, our ascended Lord is not far from us, but is himself offering us
personal fellowship and all of the gifts he won for us by his ministry. We are
so removed from the shores of ancient
Holy Communion is not private, but corporate;
not merely spiritual, but physical as well; not just representational, but
real. When eternity met time, God visited sinful flesh in the physical person
and work of Christ. Now, whenever we eat the bread and drink the cup, we meet
this incarnate Word and receive the benefits of his passion and resurrection.
We do not meet him by “walking with him and
talking with him” in a garden of private devotion that we have imagined or
conjured in our own hearts. We encounter Jesus by receiving him in Word and
sacrament. In doing so, we are truly taken to heaven by the Holy Spirit, where
he places us gently into Christ’s arms.
IS ALL OF LIFE SACRED?
Of
course, if there is a danger in saying that nothing is sacramental, there is an
equal danger in saying that everything is sacramental. We often hear this, even
in some evangelical circles which have been influenced by highly aesthetic
forms of expression: “All of life is sacred,” or “All of life is sacramental.”
The Roman Church undermined the importance of
God’s ordained sacraments by adding sacraments of their own. The Anabaptist
enthusiasts undermined them by reducing the efficacy of the two sacraments
Christ instituted. We see both extremes in our own day as well. In fact, many
who would not be inclined to see baptism and the Lord’s Supper as actual “means
of grace” would have no difficulty applying that designation to any number of
other things that are never described as such in Scripture.
I recall hearing an evangelist associated with
a group that does not practice the biblical sacraments referring to a
short-term mission as “a means of grace.” Many of us raised in evangelicalism
remember the altar call and rededication, or summer-camp resolutions in this
manner. A particularly sinful week could be atoned for by rededicating
ourselves in a public meeting to “start over” with Christ. This amounts to
nothing less than a Protestant version of penance.
If we do not accept or sufficiently appreciate
God’s chosen way of coming near to us, we set up scores of other “means of
grace.” On this point, Karl Barth echoed the Reformation’s emphasis on the
preached Word as God’s means of grace. “Does not God speak through nature too,
through history, through Handel’s ‘
While he was criticizing the temptation of
German liberals to raise high culture to a sacramental level, we might just as
easily charge evangelicals today with raising popular culture to a means of
grace. An evangelical missions professor and popular author writes that organ
music poses “a theological problem. God has chosen to come close. It is we who
choose to push him away—with music, with pulpits, with stilted translations of
Scripture, with preaching styles. Somehow, worship with guitars seems to bring
him close again.”5
Imagine replacing “guitars” with “Word and
sacraments,” in that sentence: “Somehow, worship with Word and sacraments seems to bring him close again.” Many
evangelicals would consider this a practically Roman Catholic view, but they
have no difficulty embracing other activities that have no command in Scripture
as “means of grace.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF
MUSIC
It
is interesting the extent to which many contemporary churches regard music as a
means of grace, and not only one sacramental ordinance, but the chief one. In
fact, one leader of the church growth movement states, “Music is how to convert
a collection of people into a community. It is the most powerful thing we do.
That is one of the reasons the new wave of contemporary Christian music and new
forms of worship have tended to be highly conspicuous.” This writer, in fact,
hails the contemporary style that is “spontaneous” and “visual,” “freeing the
preacher from the pulpit,” and “replacing the word ‘worship’ with the word
‘celebration’”6
Where in Acts 2 do we read that “music is how
to convert a collection of people into a community”? We see Word and sacrament,
but where is the sacramental efficacy of music? Yet the contemporary worship
style, in which music plays an important part, is now viewed by many as the
only means of grace. It is seen as the only way of reaching the lost and
creating community. In other words, we create this community by our style,
rather than by seeing God create it by his grace, working through his ordained
means.
The very suggestion that matters of musical
style or church furniture and architecture do not matter is Gnostic, ignoring
the physical embodiment of the message. But Karl Barth was one theologian who
recognized this danger in liberalism as we see it now in evangelicalism:
It has now become a
most unusual consideration, common only in the language of edification, to say
that people go to church to hear God’s Word—no, they go to hear Pastor
So-and-So—or to say of the pastor that his task is to proclaim God’s Word—no,
it is to offer his expositions, meditations, applications, and demands! I need
hardly say that the devastating lack of tension and dynamic, the lukewarm
tediousness and irrelevance of Protestant worship, is closely connected with
this consideration.7
Preaching, Barth said, used to be God’s Word
to his Church, but now it has become the preacher’s wit and inspiration for the
customers. He explains why Reformed churches have high pulpits and related
expressions of God’s “above-ness” and “other-ness”:
Preaching takes place
from the pulpit (a place which by its awesome but obviously intentional height
differs from a podium), and on the pulpit, as a final warning to those who
ascend it, there is a big Bible. Preachers also wear a robe—I am not
embarrassed even to say this—and they should do so, for it is a salutary
reminder that from those who wear this special garment the people expect a
special word. A formidable and even demonic instrument, the organ, is also
active, and in order that the town and country alike should be aware of the
preaching, bells are rung. And if none of these things help,
will not the crosses in the churchyard which quietly look in through the
windows tell you unambiguously what is relevant here and what is not?”8
How morbid is this Barth, not only binding
preachers to high and distant pulpits with big Bibles and robes, but praising
cemetery crosses which can be easily observed through the windows. Contemporary
worship cannot even deal with death, so deeply entrenched is its Gnosticism.
For instance, in the article cited above, Lyle Schuller approvingly explains,
The best illustration
of this {shift from ‘worship’ to ‘celebration’} is that we used to have
‘funerals’. Then we went to ‘memorial
service.’ Now we have a ‘celebration’ of the life and ministry of the departed
person. There’s a shift in the whole atmosphere of what happens during that
period of time. It’s gone from pain, sorrow, grief and
crying to celebration.9
Even in the face of death, which Barth pointed
up as a reminder of our weakness and humanness, contemporary worship refuses to
sober up and adopt a serious position. If death is an occasion for informal
“celebration” and cheerful smiles, is there anything that will cause us to take
the realities of this earthly existence seriously? Can nothing remind us that we
are but dust—creatures—and sinful creatures at that? If there is no confession
of sin anymore in the service, no declaration of pardon, no high and exalted
Word, and no sacrament to visually confirm the Word, is it any wonder that so
many either stop attending church altogether or seek other so-called means of
grace?
So how do we bridge the gap then? If the
service is to stress God’s distance, how will people be encouraged to get close
to God? That is the point: We don’t bridge that gap, not by music, not by
“celebrations,” not by signs and wonders, not by all-night prayer meetings. It
is God who bridges the gap; it is he who comes close to us, and he does this as
he reveals himself to us and dispenses his forgiveness through Word and
sacrament. These are God’s activities, not ours. As such, the focus of our
services ought to be on God and not on the celebrants.
God is free to be or to do whatever he
chooses, whenever he chooses, however he chooses, for whomever he chooses. This
is the very essence of God’s character, which he revealed to Moses and to all
generations through him. His mercy and his presence can never be presumed upon
or ‘conjured” by techniques on our end, whether inspiring music or testimonies,
moving altar calls or mass meetings of prayer, praise, fasting and confession.
He answers the call neither of the organ or the guitar, but promises to be
present in the weakness of preaching. Still less is he awakened and summoned to
our meetings by odd phenomena of barking, laughing and roaring that somehow
come to be identified with “revival.” God comes to us on his terms.
FURTHER UP, FURTHER IN
In
a recent issue of Christianity Today,
Quaker writer Richard Foster wrote an article on “the means of grace.”*
Beginning with the title, “Becoming Like Christ: Further Up, Further In,” the
author sees the means of grace as having to do exclusively with our spiritual
and moral transformation. Thus, it is a subjective rather than objective
ministry that these means perform.
“Further Up, Further In,” underscores the
direction we have been arguing against throughout this book. That is not to say
that we are not to set our minds on things in heaven, for we have already seen
how this is where we are seated in Christ. Nevertheless, it is not the purpose
of sacraments to lead us ever-higher until we finally experience something akin
to the “Beatific Vision” known to mystics and monks in the Middle Ages. The
whole purpose of sacraments is to drive us further out of ourselves, not into
ourselves! They take our focus off of our own experience, performance, and
imagination, guiding us to Christ’s cross.
In this article the author offers an abundance
of “means of grace,” leading off with work. Although our work in the world is a
gift of common grace and is shared by Christians and non-Christians alike by
virtue of creation rather than redemption, Foster sees it as a channel of
grace. Trials can be a means of grace, as are “movings of the Spirit.” Still
other means of grace include the spiritual disciplines: “prayer, study, fasting,
solitude, simplicity, confession, celebration, and the like.”10
The reality is, all
of life is not sacred or sacramental. Still, that does not denigrate the
common. God is as much the Lord and sustainer in our common daily activities as
he is in the supernatural activities of Word and sacrament. We need not
“spiritualize” that which God has already himself created, whether music, art,
science, or any other cultural pursuit, for the common is as truly created and
ruled by God as is the holy.
However, God is active in a different way when
he meets us where he has promised. God is involved with our lives whether we
are in church or at work, but his involvement is different in each case. We are
to do all that we do—whether we eat or drink—to the glory of God. Yet such a
common meal, graced with God’s pleasure and provision, is not sacred. It is
common time, not holy time. It is a common place and a common activity, but
supported by God and a meal in which he takes great delight.
We do not have to say that something is
“sacramental” or “sacred” for it to be honoring to God. That is Paul’s point
when he directs us to do all things to the glory of God. But in the sacraments,
God promises to meet with us in a different way, separate from all normal,
common activities of daily life, in saving grace rather than common grace. We
must not doubt that his promise is true.
Can we really say that every time we have a
meal we are receiving Christ’s body and blood? Surely not, for we have no
promise from God that he will provide these gifts except as he has ordained. We
do not receive God’s gifts whenever and however we choose, but must find them
in the time, place, and manner that he has chosen. The Good News is that God
has bridged the gap—not only in providing Christ for our salvation, but in
giving him to us and applying his benefits in our lives here and now. He has
come down to us—all the way down—and not left a single step for us to climb.
1.
John Calvin, The Institutes of the
Christian Religion, 3.1.1
2.
Charles Stanley, The Wonderful
Spirit-Filled Life, p. 5.
3.
ibid.
4.
Karl Barth, The
1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1990) p. 33.
5.
Charles Kraft, Worship Leader
magazine, April-May 1993, p. 7.
6.
Lyle Schuller, Worship Leader magazine,
July-August 1995, p. 34.
7.
Karl Barth, op. cit. p. 31
8.
ibid., pp. 31-32.
9.
Lyle Schuller, op. cit. p. 34.
10.
Richard Foster, Christianity Today,