Author: fundyreformed

2008 Desiring God Conference: The Power of Words and the Wonder of God

~ fundyreformed ~ 4 Comments

I am blessed to be a member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, where my pastor is John Piper. His sermons and writings have made a lasting impact in my walk with Christ. He is a very humble man, even though he is an evangelical leader with an ever-growing influence. Desiring God is the ministry our church started to help spread pastor John’s writings and books. And for the past several years they’ve held a national conference here in Minneapolis.

I haven’t yet attended one, largely because it conflicts with my job schedule and I can’t afford it. But with Desiring God’s policy to spread sermons in print, audio and video formats for free, I get to enjoy them anyway. Here’s a run down on this year’s conference. I haven’t started listening yet, but I’m planning on downloading and listening to all the messages.

  • This link will take you to the conference online headquarters with info about the speakers, and all the introductory videos, etc.
  • This link will list the links for downloading all the messages or listening/watching them online.
  • Here is a list of a series of blog posts at DG’s blog which summarize the 6 messages and 2 speaker panels:

If you did attend the conference, share your thoughts with us. In the meantime, I think I’ll start with Bob Kauflin’s message. I have great respect for his wisdom and insights, and he has written some of the best and richest songs I’ve ever heard.

Legalism And Its Antidotes

~ fundyreformed ~ 2 Comments

Recently we’ve been discussing the sticky issue of legalism. It’s hard to define, and its easy to use the term as a perjorative against those you think are wrong. The term is still important, however, because it describes a sin which is deadly. A sin which in many Christian circles is able to walk incognito, wearing a mask of holiness. If anything deserves to be studied, legalism does.

I came across an excellent article on legalism by Dominic Smart hosted at beginningwithmoses.org. I want to provide an excerpt where he discusses what Legalism is, and then encourage you all to go read the entire article.

Legalism isn’t a matter of having rules, structures, limits or instructions in our congregations or individual lives. While they can be overdone, and often are by people of a certain temperament, they are necessary for godly order in any fellowship: God has given many to us in the Scriptures. The opposite of legalism isn’t lawlessness (antinomianism, as some like to call it), which is nothing more than anarchic pride. Nobody is delivered into that. Christian freedom isn’t freedom to do whatever you want: down here none of us is safe to be let loose with such a freedom; up there – well, we’ll be different then!

Legalism is primarily a God-ward thing. It’s a way of making and keeping yourself acceptable to God. From this flows the legalism that is directed towards one another It’s a way of scoring sanctity points in our fellowships, and exerting what one postmodernist called a “truth regime” – it’s about pride, power and control. It simultaneously glorifies man and “unsecures” man. Thus its true opposites are grace and faith.

Yet it is so plausible. The need for order, structures and boundaries feeds our quest for control. Our very ability to keep some rules feeds our pride and gives us the impression that our relationship with God is somehow founded upon this ability. But in the same day, our inability to keep others feeds our despair, which in turn generates more rules and a more strenuous effort to keep them. Since laws and rules can be helpful, legalism seems to be on to a winner.

It often arises out of a good motive: to be holy. We don’t want sin to rule over us, we don’t want to grieve God or to stray from his path. And it is a narrow path compared to the one that leads to destruction. So in order to avoid big sins we add rules to God’s word – hedging sinful territory around with codes that are intended to keep us from it. It is the well-intentioned, keen and committed who are most prone to it. The half-hearted Christian couldn’t really care enough to veer towards legalism (though he or she makes up for it with many other errors). It was the scribes, following good Ezra, who developed “the traditions of men” which people preferred to the word of God: a preference that Jesus blasted in Mark 7.

But all this focuses the mind on self. It takes the mind and heart away from Christ, the Proper Man. It takes our faith away from His sufficiency and misplaces it upon ours. We live to achieve his approval; we forget that we are already alive and accepted in Christ. Ever so plausibly, we are sold a different gospel: one that isn’t really a gospel at all. And the desire not to sin in some big way can be little more than a mask to hide our lack of faith in Jesus, “who has become for us wisdom from God – that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption” . (1Cor 1:30). Holiness is not a matter of living on eggshells with a God who is reserving judgement on us and might turn us away at any moment.

It really is a deadly false thing, this warped alternative, this lie, this all-pervasive and hideous distortion of Christian living…

Dominic goes on to give 8 reasons why legalism is deadly, and he follows those up with eight antidotes to legalism. The article is a bit lengthy but it will be worth your time to read it.

Why Do We Say "Legalism"

~ fundyreformed ~ 20 Comments

A friend of mine just posted an interesting list of definitions by John Piper on a variety of topics. He linked to the online sermon or article from which the definition was taken, and gave a summary of the definition.

One of those definitions was legalism. Let me give Piper’s definition here.

(1) Treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God’s favor. . . .(2): The erecting of specific requirements of conduct beyond the teaching of Scripture and making adherence to them the means by which a person is qualified for full participation in the local family of God, the church; This is where unbiblical exclusivism arises.

I think this is an excellent definition, but of course not everyone will be happy with it. Someone commented on the original post about this definition, taking issue with it. As I typed an answer to it, I thought maybe my answer could serve as a post here. His basic objection was to the first part of Piper’s answer. Why shouldn’t people treat biblical standards of conduct as personal regulations? Why is it that such actions are construed as legalism or as “earning favor with God”?

Here then is my answer, minus a few introductory statements:

Chris…. you bring up some valid points. But look at Piper’s definition a little more closely: “Treating biblical standards of conduct as regulations to be kept by our own power in order to earn God’s favor.” Piper has many personal rules of conduct that he keeps out of a desire to please God. He does so from love for God, not a sense of rigorous duty. What’s important I think is “by our own power” . For years I was in a system that taught us to “just do it” . If we were really serious about God we would keep these rules and regulations, most of which went way beyond what was spelled out in Scripture. It was hard to toe the line, and we were encouraged to have character and resolve. Yes we were told to depend on the spirit, but the emphasis was on personal effort.

In keeping those rules we felt that we were truly obeying God. And when we saw others who didn’t keep those same rules, part of us, deep inside, thought we were better than them. We felt we were in a sense earning status with God. Our group was more serious about God then other groups. Why? Because we did this, and that. The emphasis was on us. And we didn’t truly have a perspective of God’s grace and a genuine love for all the brothers and sisters we have in Christ.

This is what Piper is arguing against. And while I often bristled against the term “legalism” too. After I came out of the system and thought more objectively, I realized that legalism really did fit. The focus was externals. Not that those aren’t important, but the very nature of the environment we were in promoted the idea of making sure we look good to others by keeping the community’s rules. Since we judged each other on externals so much, and since externals were harped on in the pulpit so often, it became natural to think this way. We were all, to one degree or another, earning favor and status with God. Yes the Gospel was preached but it was presented as a thing to accept mentally and assent to once, and after that you pay God back, in a sense, by keeping His rules. It was not really presented as something you can live by.

What is missing is that in our own strength we are sure to fall. The rules are hard. And when that was acknowledged we were encouraged to vow to do better, to clench our teeth and determine not to give up, to go forward and recommit ourselves to God during the public invitation. To seek accountability and force ourselves to do it. Often manipulative, human-oriented schemes were used to try to belittle those who didn’t persevere. It was a method to try to encourage them to keep on keeping on. In all of this a focus on Christ was lost. The Gospel is all about the fact we can’t keep God’s rules. We need help. And we have a glorious Savior. From the love He’s given me, and in light of the glorious grace of God giving me what I do not deserve, I can have a Spirit-wrought desire to please Him. With that motivation, the rules of what I do or don’t do, are not burdensome. They don’t even really matter. What matters is my love for Jesus and desire to please Him. If I fall, I know I have an advocate, and I am saddened since I displease Him. And I’m again amazed that He picks me up and helps me keep going.

I hope you can see how this “legalism” can be harmful. It can take our focus off of Christ and onto ourselves. And the 2nd kind of legalism points us to our neighbors. We assess whether they are qualified for me to even consider them part of our church. This is doubly harmful because the standards we’re measuring them by are not even entirely Biblical. They are more often a particular application of a Biblical principle.

I hope this helps explain where we are coming from. Terms like this are inflammatory I know. There’s not much we can do about that. But if you see where our objection is to this kind of thing, maybe it helps you understand why we label it “legalism” and why we are against it.

I’d encourage you to check out C.J. Mahaney’s book The Cross-Centered Life, it has an excellent chapter on legalism.

Blessings,

Bob Hayton

Christian Musician Ray Boltz Declares He's Gay

~ fundyreformed ~ 27 Comments

This news shocked me. But I really appreciate Fred Butler’s assessment on this. It’s sad, as this reveals Boltz has sung about but very likely never truly embraced the Gospel. There is still hope for him. May God convict him. And may he wisen many of us up to the damning allure of sin.

If you don’t recognize his name, Boltz was a CCM singer who won numerous awards over the years. He’s most famous for his song “Thank you for giving to the Lord”.

Life and Blogging

~ fundyreformed ~ 1 Comment

Sorry about the philosophical title. I’m not throwing in the towel or anything.

I’ve started learning Hebrew this semester with The Bethlehem Institute, my church’s seminary quality training school. So I’ve got lots of homework! Got to lear my Aleph, Beta, and Gimels! You can see my friend Shaun Tabbat, blog about our class on his blog. He’s re-learning it, so I envy him!

For the blog I have many plans. Too many and not enough time. And worse, I don’t have high speed internet at home, and my connection has been quite poor. I’ve finally given in and am going to move up to DSL, so that might help.

I hope to finish the overview pages that you’ll find at all the tabs at the top of the blog. I’d like to finish a few unfinished series around here, and start another. I’m also planning on continuing to include more book reviews and Music Monday posts. I’d also like to work on my family photo blog and move it somewhere, and maybe I’ll revive my currently stalled Mission blog. I’d like to keep it, but I don’t want to use Blogger, and I’m partially moved over to Tumblr.org, but now I’m thinking WordPress might be easier. We’ll see!

Just wanted to give an update on life and blogging. Hopefully posts will be more regular around here again soon.