[T]o the believer all things speak of God; the whole universe is the mirror of his perfections. There is not an atom of the universe in which his everlasting power and deity are not clearly seen. Both from within and from without, God’s witness speaks to us. God does not leave himself without a witness, either in nature or history, in heart or conscience, in life or lot. This witness of God is so powerful, accordingly, that almost no one denies its reality. All humans and peoples have heard something of the voice of the Lord. The consent of all peoples is confirmation of the fact that God does not leave himself without a witness; it is humanity’s response to the voice of God. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
Author: Josh King
A Religious Assassination (1 Timothy 1:12-17)
Why was Paul saved? “I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life.” Paul’s salvation wasn’t accidental. Paul didn’t chance upon the opportune place at the opportune time where and when grace happened to burst through the earth’s crust. Nor was it that Paul had a core of virtue beneath a veneer of vileness so that universal grace found a ready subject.
Saving grace isn’t a shotgun; it’s a sniper rifle. God is a hunter, a sniper, who has a specific target to make a loud statement. This is an assassination to make a religious statement. The assassination was followed by resurrection. Saul became Paul because of Jesus, and Jesus killed and resurrected Paul to communicated this to wretched sinners: He can kill and resurrect any one of you.
God has a galaxy of grace to match your Jupiter of sin. Do you feel the crushing, unbearable weight of your sins? Do distress if God’s grace can match them? This is as brainless as fretting if there is enough Milky Way for Jupiter. Jupiter’s covered, and so are you if you are in Jesus.
Your thirst isn’t bigger than this ocean. Your darkness isn’t as potent as this Son’s light. Your stain is not as set as His blood is cleansing. Your sin isn’t bigger than Jesus’ atonement.
The Dogmatician: Nothing Is Atheistic
In an absolute sense, therefore, nothing is atheistic. And this witness of Scripture is confirmed on every side. There is no atheistic world. There are no atheistic peoples. Nor are there atheistic persons. The world cannot be atheistically conceived since in that case it could not be the work of God but would have to be the creation of an anti-god. …There is nobody able, absolutely and with logical consistency, to deny God’s knowability and hence his revelation. Agnosticism itself is proof of this point: like skepticism, it cannot maintain itself except with the aid of what it opposes. And precisely because the world cannot be conceived as godless, there are no atheistic and areligious peoples. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
The Fountain of Eternal, Infinite Bliss (1 Timothy 1:11)
…the gospel of the glory of the blessed God. —1 Timothy 1:11
The gospel is a gospel of glory and the glory is the glory of God, but is Paul wanting to say something more specific than that? Is “blessed” just a chance adjective that Paul uses to describe God here such that he could have just as coincidentally said the gospel of the glory of the holy God, the immortal God, or the gracious God?
Rewind thirteen years. I come home and tell my parents that I have good news. Specifically, I say that I have “good news of the beauty of my godly fiancé.” When I use that phrase, do I desire to tell them about her beauty in general, such that godly is a chance adjective, or is the specific beauty that is such good news the beauty of her godliness? If you know my parents then you would know that the news that would most thrill them would be the news of her godliness. When you understand the person, then you realize that the adjective isn’t a chance choice.
When you understand the persons involved in 1 Timothy 1:11, then you know that “blessed” isn’t some chance adjective, and by persons I don’t merely mean Timothy and Paul. I mean the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When you understand the Trinity, then you see that the good news is good news of the glory of God’s happiness, His eternal bliss, His unconquerable joy.
Why is God so happy? The short answer is that He is God. But our sinful minds can misunderstand that too easily. We read Psalm 115:3, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases,” and we think God is happy simply because He can do whatever He wants to do. We say we would be happy too if we were God. Like the little child that sees dad and mom staying up late, watching a movie, eating popcorn and thinks that being an adult is the happiest thing in the world because you can do whatever you want, we are naive. Their are deeper joys and complexities beyond the child’s comprehension. So it is with God, but we do get glimpses. One such glimpse is at Jesus’ baptism. There we get a snippet of how the Triune God has eternally related. The Son does the Father’s will, The Father sends the Spirit to anoint His Son and exclaims, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” No dad rising from the bleachers has ever matched God the Father’s rising from the throne, rending the sky and exclaiming His joy. The Father is happy because the perfect Son perfectly reflects His perfect glory.
God’s happiness rests ultimately not on what He does, but in who He is. God is love. God’s being love didn’t happen once upon a time. It didn’t rev up at creation. It didn’t ignite when God breathed into man the breath of life. Eternally the Father has delighted in the Son, the Son in the Father, and the Spirit in the Father and Son.
Redemption overflows from this love. Creation and redemption speak to the fullness of God’s delight in God. Why did the Father plan our redemption? For the glory of the Son (Philippians 2:8–11; Colossians 1:15–17). Why did the Son accomplish our redemption? For the glory of the Father (John 12:27–28; 14:31; 17:1-4). Why does the Spirit apply our redemption? To glorify the Son and the Father (John 15:26; 16:14).
But now for the goodest part of this goodest of news. Our redemption not only flows out of God’s joy in God, it flows into God’s joy in God. At the end of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 He asks His Father, “that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” With what love do you love Jesus? You love Jesus with the Father’s love for Jesus put in you by the Spirit. Your love for Jesus is an expression of the Father’s love for Jesus. Astoundingly, in John 15:9, Jesus says that He loves us as the Father has loved Him. How is this not idolatrous? Because His love for us and toward us is an expression of His love for the Father. Jesus goes on to say that He has spoken these words (Joh 15:9-11) so that His joy may be in us, and that our joy may be full. Our love for God is God’s love for God. Our joy in God is God’s joy in God.
Behold the fountain from which our salvation flows and which it flows into—the blessed triune God. This fountain is its own undiminishing source, so it is natural that it would flow back into itself. The ocean of bliss from which our salvation flows, is the fountain from which it gushed. God is the Alpha and the Omega of our salvation. Our salvation flows out of God’s delight in God, and into God’s delight in God so that we exclaim with David, “in your presence there is fulness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).” This is the gospel of the glory of the blessed God.
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. —Romans 11:36
The Hard Labor of Unbelief
Belief in a personal God is both natural and normal; it arises in human consciousness spontaneously and universally. Unbelief requires enormous effort. There is not proof available to it. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
For the Love of the Gospel, Love the Law (1 Timothy 1:8–11)
“The law is good (1 Timothy 1:8).” That short phrase could do a lot of bad theology a lot of good. The law is good, and the gospel is glorious (1 Timothy 1:11); and the gospel’s being glorious doesn’t undo the law’s goodness.
The law is good, if one uses it lawfully. This is like saying that cars are good, if one uses them lawfully. When a drunk, reckless, or irresponsible driver gets behind the wheel, that mass of metal, plastic, oil, and gas becomes a bad thing for humanity; but we don’t outlaw cars. We understand that the problem isn’t the car, but the driver. Likewise, when Paul says the certain persons who are teaching “different doctrine,” want to be “teachers of the law,” we must understand that the problem isn’t the law. Cars are good, but that doesn’t mean we let the immature or blind use them at their leisure. Likewise, when the spiritually blind, or the immature young convert gets behind the wheel of the law all alone, the best place to be is behind them. Young converts have their permits, but they need a mature Christian to teach them how to drive the law. How then should we use the law? Lawfully.
To make the likening more accurate, when Paul says that the law is to be used lawfully, it is like saying that cars are to be used car-fully. Cars are meant to be used as cars, not kamikaze missiles. How was the law to be used? Protestants have long spoken of three uses of the law. The law is a bridle to restrain sin. It is a mirror to show us our sin. And it is a map for the Christian showing them how to live the blessed life. Amen. But there is something more foundational. How does one use the law lawfully? What was the point of the law?
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. —Jesus, Matthew 5:17–19
Jesus shows us what the point of the law is—Him. The law was never meant to be used without reference to Jesus. Never! When God gave His good law to his people at Sinai, a lamb had been slain first, redemption out of slavery had already happened, and a promise had been made to Abraham generations before. We should be slow to throw away as unnecessary that which Jesus kept perfectly for our salvation. The law shows us how to love God and love our neighbor. Jesus kept that good law perfectly for us, and bore God’s just wrath for all of our law breaking. If you love Jesus, you will love the law. If you love redemption, you will love the law. If you love grace, you will love the law. You will plead with the psalmist, “graciously teach me your law (Psalm 119:29).” You will exclaim, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day (Psalm 119:97).”
The Dogmatician: Theology Should Be Relentlessly Theological, and Thus, Doxological
So then, the knowledge of God is the only dogma, the exclusive content, of the entire field of dogmatics. All the doctrines treated in dogmatics—whether they concern the universe, humanity, Christ, and so forth—are but the explication of the one central dogma of the knowledge of God. All things are considered in light of God, subsumed under him, traced back to him as the starting point. Dogmatics is always called upon to ponder and describe God and God alone, whose glory is in creation and re-creation, in nature and grace, in the world and in the church. It is the knowledge of him alone that dogmatics must put on display.
By pursuing this aim, dogmatics does not become a dry and academic exercise, without practical usefulness for life. The more it reflects on God, the knowledge of whom is its only content, the more it will be moved to adoration and worship. Only if it never forgets to think and speak about matters rather than about mere words, only if it remains a theology of facts and does not degenerate into a theology of rhetoric, only then is dogmatics as the scientific description of the knowledge of God also superlatively fruitful for life. The knowledge of God-in-Christ, after all, is life itself (Ps. 89:16; Isa. 11:9; Jer. 31:34; John 17:3). For that reason Augustine desired to know nothing other and more than God and himself. ‘I desire to know God and the soul. Nothing more? No: nothing at all.’ —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
How Emphasizing Experience Opens the Door to Heresy
Occasionally a remarkable blind spot prevents people from seeing this point. Almost twenty years ago I rode in a car with a fellow believer who relayed to me what the Lord had ‘told’ him that morning in his quiet time. He had been reading the KJV of Matthew; and I perceived that not only had he misunderstood the archaic English, but also that the KJV at that place had unwittingly misrepresented the Greek text. I gently suggested there might be another way to understand the passage and summarized what I thought the passage was saying. The brother dismissed my view as impossible on the grounds that the Holy Spirit, who dies not lie, had told him the truth on this matter. Being young and bold, I pressed on with my explanation of grammar, context, and translation, but was brushed off by a reference to 1 Cor. 2:10b-15: spiritual things must be spiritually discerned—which left little doubt about my status. Genuinely intrigued, I asked this brother what he would say if I put forward my interpretation, not on the basis of grammar and text, but on the basis that the Lord himself had Oven me the interpretation I was advancing. He was silent a long time, and then concluded, ‘I guess that would mean the Spirit says the Bible means different things to different people.’ —D.A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies
Towards a Healthy Immune System (1 Timothy 1:3-7)
When you read the details of the death of some ancient, be slow to give a diagnosis. With the exception of Galatians, I’m not sure we can be very precise as to the exact heresies Paul is speaking about in various letters. We see the church with puffy eyes, and a bad cough, but we are unsure of the disease. She’s sick, but what’s the sickness? We get clues and hints and we learn of elements and emphases, but no robust heretical synopsis is presented. We jump into the middle of letters, of conversations, where much is understood by the original “to” and “from.”
I believe this is best for us and that we have received the letters as they are because of God’s gracious wisdom. Because of this fuzziness we are more inquisitive and alert concerning these heresies. Instead of a specific vaccine to combat just one virus, we develop a healthy immune system to fight against many. The lack of specificity helps us to produce generalized antibodies that attack a wide range of theological bacteria and heterodox viruses. What little we learn of the false teachers in 1 Timothy 1:4 builds an immunity to a wide spectrum of threats to the body of Christ.
It causes us to be wary of anything with a mystical flavor; anything that seeks to commune directly with Christ. For example, I remember in seminary a number of us were reading Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. At the time my diagnostic skills were not keen enough. Foster is a Quaker. Quakers emphasize looking for the light of Jesus within them. If you’ve read Foster, read him again in this light and you’ll see Scripture is generally set aside and direct communion with God by means other than Word and Sacrament are emphasized (if you’re looking for a solid book on spiritual disciplines I would commend Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life). Man’s speculations are set above God’s revelation, of which we are stewards (1 Timothy 1:4). A more widespread cousin virus goes by the name Experiencing God, that effects the body in much the same way.
Along these lines you can identify Heaven is for Real as a viral virus that has infected the body. Remember, viruses try to look like normal body cells. Here again man’s speculation is elevated above God’s revelation. I am thankful that the title is so helpful in pointing out the problem. Heaven is for Real, really? Because of a boy’s vision we now have greater assurance, peace, and faith? Never mind the Father’s infallible, inerrant, inspired, incredible words about His Son, we now have a boy’s vision. If your faith isn’t settled in the Bible, it isn’t Biblical faith (Romans 10:17). Besides Scripture’s being sidelined, compare the boy’s nonchalant, casual encounter with the risen Christ, with the awe and glory of His New Testament appearances. Compare Burpo’s book to Randy Alcorn’s excellent book Heaven. By the way, if you are a properly functioning antibody, you must alert the body for her health. We must name the virus, anything else is unloving. It matters not if the virus’ host is a little boy.
Also, bacteria like the Bible code, hidden meanings, and the prophecy specialist with his charts, dates, and antichrist suspect list now are recognized for what they are. But a bacteria that still goes unnoticed by many is those who are orthodox on paper, but whose papers are pretty hidden. The doctrine is the fine print, the experience gets the bold face, colored, graphic-designed font. Beware the church that is all about providing you an experience, and beware your own heart if that is what you are seeking. When experience becomes the priority, the doors are wide open for false teaching, both for “shepherds,” and the flock. Look at the charismatic crazies. The glue that binds together all kinds of incompatible doctrines is experience—a direct experience with the Holy Spirit, so they say.
Don’t play in man-made, putrid, stagnant, bacteria-ridden, tepid, toxic ponds, swim in the God-accomplished, God-revealed, sweet, refreshing, and pure ocean of the gospel found in the Holy Bible.
The Dogmatician: Knowable, but Incomprehensible!
Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. To be sure, the term “mystery” in Scripture does not mean an abstract supernatural truth in the Roman Catholic sense. Yet Scripture is equally far removed from the idea that believers can grasp the revealed mysteries in a scientific sense. In truth, the knowledge that God has revealed of himself in nature and Scripture far surpasses human imagination and understanding. In that sense it is all mystery with which the science of dogmatics is concerned, for it does not deal with finite creatures, but from beginning to end looks past all creatures and focuses on the eternal and infinite One himself. From the very start of its labors, it faces the incomprehensible One. —Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics
No Other Boast 