Category: Facebook Chronicles

8 January, 2021

Limits to Authority

Imagine, if you will . . . echoing Rod Sterling and the Twilight Zone

Imagine, if you will, a government that knows the limits of its authority.

As I have written before, there are differing approaches among Christians to the lockdowns in Ontario. Some will argue that we must obey the government in this, and others say we must disobey. Paul Carter of the Gospel Coalition did an excellent job of exegeting Hebrews 10:24-25 on this, and although I am not convinced, he made a cogent argument.

I think much of the discussion has, however, missed the point, and Carter is answering a question that I, for one, am not asking. For many of us, it is not a matter of civil disobedience (although that will be the perception) as it is the limits of governmental authority in the first place. We may see several spheres of authority in Scripture: family, church, and civil government. Family was ordained in the garden. Church, broadly worship, was immediately after as seen in how God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s. As Bruce Waltke said, “Cain failed in the field because he failed at the altar.”

Civil government immediately follows as the population increases.

There is overlap and cooperation between these spheres, but all three are under the Lordship of Christ. In general, the family is responsible for education, health and well-being, and economics. The church is responsible for the ministry of the Word and the sacraments, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. The state, or civil government is responsible for the protection of the nation from outside forces, and to administer law and justice (and that justice is to be defined by the law of God, not created by fiat).

It isn’t hard to see how the modern state has taken over most roles of the family and church, so that each of these functions are now under the state’s authority. The state has grown to a point that family and church can be deemed, “nonessential” in Covid-19 pandemic terms.

The reason this has happened is that as a people we have rejected the idea that the spheres are placed as they are by God and are inviolable by the others spheres of authority. The family is a sovereign unto itself within the Kingdom of God as is the church.

The church does not have authority over the family nor does the family over the church.

Neither the family nor the church have authority over the state, and the state does not have authority over the church and family. The Christian is to submit to the state (Romans 13:1-2) and at the same time “obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). The behaviour of Christians in the New Testament and in the early church indicate that they did not believe the submission to the state was absolute. It was the state’s task to administer justice, not to set the theology of the church. When Caesar demanded that all people, not just Christians, burn incense as worship to him and declare, “Caesar is Lord,” the Christians chose death instead.

All of this, of course, can only work where there is an acknowledgement of Christ’s Lordship over all of life, and that there is no neutral ground that operates freely apart from this Lordship.

To continue, I’d like to make this perfectly clear:

1. Jesus is not a future king, but king now. He is king of Canada, king of the United States, and king of the entire planet, solar system, galaxy and universe. There is no person, place or thing that is outside of His authority right now, and His law prevails. His will shall be done “on earth as it is in heaven.”

2. For many years, Christians have claimed that the King is coming, but the Gospel says He is here and reigns now. This places our civil governments as rebels against the King, insofar as the decrees, laws, mandates, and bylaws violate His law.

3. If Christ is not acknowledged, the state has no natural cause or reason to limit itself—it can only grow in authority. The Western state has, in its claim to secularity, become a law unto itself—autonomous and answerable only to itself.

4. As the state has grown and self-asserting illegitimate authority, it will destroy both family and church, as it seizes the God-given authority of both.

5. But because the state is thoroughly human, it can only become a tyranny, whether that tyranny is shown in a man, a committee, or a mob of democracy. Assuming itself autonomous, there is no higher authority to which it must answer.

When it comes to the decisions of the Ontario government to demand the closures of churches, we must learn to ask, “by what authority?” It cannot be the authority of the state if our worldview is a Christian one. If we concede the state has the authority because it asserts that it does, then it is only a matter of time that churches are closed forever as “nonessential” and all functions of the family are replaced by the state.

It is a stark choice: either the state has the authority it is claiming today or it does not. I believe it does not, but the belief that it does runs deep and is firmly entrenched in our society, even in churches.

The encroachment of the state into church and family was slow at first, until the tipping point was reached. It was reached quite awhile ago, but it is unmistakable now.,

The question is not whether we should obey the state and stay home. It is whether the state has the authority to demand it.

Imagine, if you will . . .

6 January, 2021

Georgia on My Mind

Psalm 121:1–2 (my paraphrase in CAPS)

1 I lift up my eyes to the THE NEXT ELECTION

From where does my help come?

2 My help comes from the Lord,

who made heaven and earth.

Calvin:

I answer, that the thoughts of the godly are never so stayed upon the word of God as not to be carried away at the first impulse to some allurements; and especially when dangers disquiet us, or when we are assailed with sore temptations, it is scarcely possible for us, from our being so inclined to the earth, not to be moved by the enticements presented to us, until our minds put a bridle upon themselves, and turn them back to God.

The sentence, however, may be explained as if expressed in a conditional form. Whatever we may think, would the Prophet say, all the hopes which draw us away from God are vain and delusive. If we take it in this sense, he is not to be understood as relating how he reasoned with himself, or what he intended to do, but only as declaring, that those lose their pains who, disregarding God, gaze to a distance all around them, and make long and devious circuits in quest of remedies to their troubles. It is indeed certain, that in thus speaking of himself, he exhibits to us a malady with which all mankind are afflicted; but still, it will not be unsuitable to suppose, that he was prompted to speak in this manner from his own experience; for such is the inconstancy natural to us, that so soon as we are smitten with any fear, we turn our eyes in every direction, until faith, drawing us back from all these erratic wanderings, direct us exclusively to God.

All the difference between believers and unbelievers in this respect is, that although all are prone to be deceived, and easily cheated by impostures, yet Satan bewitches unbelievers by his enchantments; whereas, in regard to believers, God corrects the vice of their nature, and does not permit them to persevere in going astray.

The meaning of the Prophet is abundantly obvious, which is, that although all the helps of the world, even the mightiest, should offer themselves to us, yet we ought not to seek safety anywhere but in God; yea, rather, that when men shall have long wearied themselves in hunting after remedies, now in one quarter and now in another, they will at length find from experience, that there is no assured help but in God alone.

By the mountains, the Prophet means whatever is great or excellent in the world; and the lesson he teaches is, that we ought to account all such favour as nothing.

John Calvin and James Anderson, Commentary on the Book of Psalms, vol. 5 (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 63–64.

6 January, 20216 January, 2021

On Ravi Zacharias. “Lord, what about this man?”

Zacharias' ministry roiled by sexual misconduct scandal - Baptist Press

On Ravi Zacharias. “Lord, what about this man?”

Matthew 23:1–3 (ESV)

“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 ‘The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.’”

We are all stunned and disappointed by the news that the sexual sins of Ravi Zacharias has been exposed, after his death last year. There will be no court of law to condemn him as guilty, but his ministry has hired a private firm to investigate the claims, and it was their conclusion that the charges made by multiple women were true. His ministry and his family have accepted those conclusions, and I am not in the position to second-guess them.

It may seem unfair to accuse a man after his death, but that doesn’t change the truth.

Now comes the question: if you benefited from his ministry—his books, recordings, sermons, conferences—what to you do with that? I have one of his books, and his writings, videos, and soundbites are “embedded” in many resources. The excellent Truth Project is one, for example. Perhaps you knew him personally and admired him–what then?

It is often easier to identify a false teacher than a false Christian, or, a false-living Christian. I can’t estimate his repentance in his last days and will not attempt to do so. I cannot say if he was a Christian, but I have an opinion which I will keep to myself. Some things must be left to the Lord:

John 21:21–22 (ESV): 21 When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” 22 Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!”

We must look after our own following—what Zacharias did does not change that.

Jesus recognized the reality that people who are living false-lives can still speak truth. He instructed the people to do as the scribes and the Pharisees taught them, but not to do as they lived.

A few Recommendations:

If the books by Zacharias helped you, keep them. Don’t loan them out or give them away. Spend the effort to find other apologists for the faith who are just as helpful. The same goes for audio materials.

I assume his works will be removed from online ministries.

One of his problems was that he was a celebrity—and this is a problem in the modern church today. We love our celebrities. This creates a “too important to fall” mentality, and worse, “too important to criticize” adoration. The celebrity culture within evangelicalism is soul—destroying, but mostly to the celebrities themselves, not to us. If we love these men, we must not worship them.

If our faith and commitment to Christ is destroyed by the fall of another believer, our faith is not in Christ at all.

Pray for his victims and his family. I think the best course of action for RZIM is to liquidate its assets and create a fund to assist the victims.