Category: Gospel Centered

Don’t Forget the Gospel This New Year’s

~ Bob Hayton ~ 4 Comments

Some of you have made New Year’s resolutions. Others have resolved to make one soon! And if you haven’t made one this year, you have other years. We all think there is wisdom in setting our mind to something and trying to achieve it.

I’m all for this kind of determination and hard-work. The problem comes when we set “spiritual” resolutions, or resolutions about our Christian life. This can lead to a confidence in the flesh for growth in our sanctification. It can lead to an unhealthy reliance on our selves for Christian growth. And ultimately, it strikes at the place of the Gospel in our lives.

I won’t speak more about this, now. Rather, I’ll point you to a great article I just found that hits on this very thing. It’s two years old now, but it still deserves a careful reading. I hope it will challenge you as it did me. Make sure your hope is in the Gospel this year, and not self-made resolutions!

Here’s the link: go over and read “Resolution-Driven vs. Gospel-Driven Living” from the Gospel-Driven Blog.

Confessionism: Abusing 1 John 1:9

~ Bob Hayton ~ 2 Comments

I want to encourage my readers to take some time and read Jim Elliff’s recent blog post on a practice he calls “confessionism”. As a former independent fundamental Baptist, I still tend toward a legalism of sorts that stresses performance and action to a fault. And while I never reached the level of zeal and devotion Jim describes in his post, I can certainly relate to a confusion over how the requirement to confess relates with the Gospel’s free gift of salvation.

“Confessionism” takes 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” and turns it into a general maxim for Christian living. It goes like this: confession of every known sin is required for us to experience a relationship with God and to have growth in our sanctification. This can lead one into an endless cycle of continual introspection and a zeal to remember and confess each and every known sin. What’s missing is a realization of God’s grace. Jim discusses this in depth, and explains how the context of 1 John 1:9 actually stresses the complete forgiveness we have in Christ. It is a must-read post. Go, check it out.

Why I’m Leery of the Manhattan Declaration

~ Bob Hayton ~ 11 Comments

Someone recently asked me what I thought of the Manhattan Declaration. For those who don’t know, the declaration I’m referring to links Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Protestants together under the banner “Christian” to stand for life and traditional marriage in our culture. It’s an attempt to stick together as Christians in our opposition to these increasingly abandoned values in our culture.

Here is my response. I understand good Christian leaders to be with me against the declaration, and others have signed it in their desire to stand for life and for transforming the culture. I haven’t really read the arguments or taken a side necessarily. But here is my perspective.

I can appreciate it for what it is, but 2 things keep me from signing.

1) It seems to single out a prizing of life and heterosexual marriage as being what Christianity is all about. I don’t think it is the role of the Church specifically to be legislating morality, as that doesn’t work due to fallen human nature. Instead we need to proclaim the gracious gospel of Christ.

2) It joins hands with Catholics and Eastern Orthodox in what could easily blur the distinctions between them and traditional Protestants. Again the gospel of salvation by grace through faith is what differentiates us from these other groups who claim the name Christian. That is an important difference that shouldn’t be obscured.

Still, I don’t think the declaration necessarily requires understanding it this way. It is just a declaration in one sense, so I can understand those who sign it. But the need of our country isn’t a united defense and legislative protection of marriage and preborn children, it needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. This is not to say that life is a small cause that we shouldn’t fight for. It is to say that heterosexual only marriage (in my view), isn’t such an important cause.

For more on what I’m getting at in point 1 above, check out my post: America — A Pagan Nation? My pal Jason Skipper over at Fundamentally Changed agrees with my assessment that this declaration represents a compromise with the gospel.

But what do you think? Why or why not do you support this declaration?

Eucharistophobia, the Common Cup, and Moore on Communion

~ Bob Hayton ~ 1 Comment

I recently came across some posts by Dr. Russell Moore (dean of the School of Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) on the subject of Communion. He has contributed to Understanding Four Views on the Lord’s Supper (a Zondervan Couterpoints book). From what I’ve seen in his post, and from the reviews at Amazon, Moore’s “Baptist” view is much more sacramental friendly then what is typical of Baptists. He prizes Communion in a way many Baptists don’t.

I’ve argued on my site for the Lord’s Supper being more than just a memorial, and also for it being more than just a thimble-sized drink with a mini-cracker. It seems Moore makes the same points.

I encourage you to take the time to check out a few posts by Dr. Moore. I’ll provide some excerpts below.

…many of our congregations come to the Table quarterly or even less often. If you ask (and I have), some of these pastors and church members will say it’s for fear of an overly ritualistic understanding of the Supper, or in order to keep the congregation from growing callous to the Supper out of repetition. But the repetition is kind of the point…..

The Lord’s Supper is proclamation, the Bible tells us: it speaks to us of the past crucifixion and the present kingdom of our Lord Christ (1 Cor. 11:26). And that’s just the point. We ignore the Supper because we don’t understand the role of gospel preaching for the believer. ~ from Why Is the Lord’s Supper So Rare?

A little bit ago, I wrote here about the scandal of the infrequency of the Lord’s Supper in so many American conservative Protestant churches. It’s a gospel issue, I believe. Our eucharistophobia atrophies gospel preaching in our churches more than I think than we realize. But imagine how you could reclaim the gospel focus of the Supper in your church….

The Lord’s Supper then should never be seen to be an afterthought, tagged on to the end of a service, perhaps after the final musical number of a visiting youth choir. This doesn’t mean the Supper needs to take a great deal of time. There’s no mandate to have a “special Lord’s Supper service,” …

The Supper should require though the same pattern as the Passover and Jesus’ institution of the Supper: explanation of God’s redemptive act followed by the enactment of it in the meal. Sinners shold be called to see in the bread and the wine their own crucifixion through the crucifixion of the Christ in whom they are hidden (Col. 3:3). It should be an opportunity to present to sinners the tangible evidence that their transgressions are forgiven. ~ from Getting the Gospel Back at the Lord’s Table

The Christian concept of the church as household necessarily entails a recovery of the Lord’s Table in our churches, especially in “low church” evangelical congregations who have, for too long, defined our vision of the Lord’s Supper too heavily on what we don’t mean.

Table fellowship is a sign of familial solidarity and of the messianic reign. This is why Jesus was so revolutionary when he announced, “Many will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 8:11 ESV), and that’s why Simon Peter was so reluctant to sit down with the uncircumcised.

So why do our evangelical Lord’s Supper services so often look like the clinical communal rinse-and-spit of fluoride at an elementary school rather than like a loving family gathered around a feast table?

Often I’ll preach in churches about the Lord’s Supper and will call on congregations to go back to using a common loaf and a common cup. I’ll challenge the churches to recover the sign of bread being torn, not daintily picked up in pre-fabricated bits. I’ll call the congregations to drink the wine, together, passing along a common cup.

I’m not offended by people disagreeing me on this. I’m just stunned by the reason they most often give for dismissing this ancient Christian practice: germs. ~ from Swine Flu and the Common Cup

Be sure to read the posts in their entirety (they aren’t very long). You can also listen to a message by Dr. Moore on Why the Lord’s Table Matters. Also feel free to see my posts on the Lord’s Supper, and also on something Moore mentions in relation to Communion: preaching the Gospel to believers.

Mining the Archives: Why Pray the “Sinner’s Prayer”?

~ Bob Hayton ~ 7 Comments

From time to time, I’ll be mining the archives around here. I’m digging up Bob’s best posts from the past. I’m hoping these reruns will still serve my readers.

Today’s post was originally published December 10, 2005.

I wrote the following as a comment to a post by Jason Janz over at Sharper Iron. The post provided excerpts from an hour and a half long interview of Mark Dever that Jason conducted. I commented on the brief excerpt below. What follows that quote is my original comments (posted back before their site crashed and lost many of their old posts). Note: I’ve updated the link to point to the current page which contains the interview. The excerpts are no longer included in that post.

Jason Janz: And if they did, then you would or wouldn’t lead them in a prayer per se?

Mark Dever: What do you mean if they “did it?”

Jason Janz: If they said “I believe.”

Mark Dever: Well, wonderful. Let’s watch. We’ll see….

I listened to much of this interview a few weeks back. Mark Dever is very interesting to listen to! This interchange, though, stuck out the most to me. Dever’s “What do you mean if they ‘did it’?” is simply amazing. He seems to come from a tradition that is not inundated with the “1,2,3 pray after me” menatlity, like most of fundamentalism is.

I see a big question raised by Jason’s question, “And if they did, then you would or wouldn’t lead them in a prayer per se?”: what would the prayer do? If they said “I believe” or if they, presumably, responded favorably to an “invitation” (a modern notion, with its roots in Charles Finney, a rank arminian, openly heretical on the doctrine of the atonement), or were convicted by a sermon and were directed to trust in Jesus and then had faith, what would praying for salvation or praying to be saved do? If all who genuinely believe are saved, as John 3:16, Acts 16:31, and etc. teach, then why does anybody need to pray for salvation?

Is there any example of any evangelist or of Christ himself ever directing someone to ask for salvation or to pray anything like a “sinner’s prayer”? The “sinner’s prayer” so often cited was a story Jesus told, and certainly someone praying the kind of prayer the publican prayed manifested genuine faith. That is why I believe that sometimes people will naturally pray some kind of prayer, as an expression of faith. Much like someone might stand and say “I believe”. But what happened first, the prayer or the belief?

Rom. 10:14 would clearly say the belief. It is important to see that Rom. 10:14 comes right on the heels of vs. 13 and provides much to help us in interpreting vs. 13. It seems to force us to see “saved” as referring to ultimate salvation. For all who believingly pray on the Lord/worship the Lord (trace the phrase “call on the Lord” in the Old Testament or New Testament and see how it is used of worship often, and often describes those who are saints. 1 Cor. 1:2–the saints are those who continually are calling on the Lord.) will be ultimately saved at the resurrection/judgment. I think it is clear that “saved” in Romans 10 refers to glorification. And I believe this is substantiated by vs. 14 saying how can they call if they have not believed (first)? Vs. 10 gives the correct order in time concerning justification, while the order given in vs. 9 is paralleling the quote of Moses discussed in vs. 5-8. I believe vs. 11 is more correctly translated by the ESV’s “put to shame” rather than the KJV’s “ashamed” (the KJV has something similar for the translation of the same greek word in 1 Pet. 2:6). Vs. 11 really is not paralleling the english idea of shame in the sense of “everyone who believes will not be ashamed of the gospel, but will eventually confess Christ before men”. But rather is saying “everyone who believes in the cornerstone will not be destroyed by the coming flood of judgment, they will not be put to shame by the judgment coming”.

Think about it. When someone is praying the “sinner’s prayer” they may have already believed, but really are still unsure that mere simple faith in Christ will be enough to save them, so they add the prayer in hopes that this will really work. So then, are we really making our converts two-fold more the child of hell by giving them assurance based on a prayer (a work that they did)? If they have believed, they should be encouraged that belief alone is all that is needed since we have such a wonderful Savior. They may want to pray a prayer of thanks for God’s already having saved them, as they are already united to Jesus Christ by faith. They should further be encouraged to live for Jesus, and warned that their faith will be proven genuine by their fruits. Then they should be baptized and added to the fellowship of believers, their local church.

For more on “the sinner’s prayer”, see my later post: “The Sinner’s Prayer Problem“.