Bill Smith, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On November 21, 2023 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship 4

The Demands of Paedocommunion

One danger of any ritual is thinking it works for blessing standing alone. The water of baptism magically grants eternal salvation apart from faith. The bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper convey blessings no matter how you live outside of the church or if you participate in the worship service. The “sinner’s prayer” saves apart from participation in the body of Christ and without perseverance. No matter the ritual, there are always dangers of isolating them from a full life of faith, treating them as if they are magic spells.

Those of us who have the privilege of practicing full covenant communion (that is, welcoming our baptized children to the Table) are not immune from the danger. Just as some treat baptism as something of a finish line, so some parents and churches treat paedocommunion (child communion) as if eating the bread and drinking the wine of communion are all that matters for the children. They don’t have to participate in the rest of the service. They can be in a nursery or some other room in the building, cutting themselves off entirely from the rest of the congregation, but when it comes time for communion, they expect to be a part.

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On November 16, 2023 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Family and Children, Theology, Worship 1

Communion: It’s For Our Children Too

Once upon a time, God created a man and a woman and put them in a garden. In the middle of this garden were two trees: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. From the latter, they were forbidden to eat. From the former, God welcomed them to eat. The man and woman would meet God at the trees, and God would give them the fruit of the Tree of Life and, through it, share his life with them.

God blessed the man and the woman at their creation and told them to be fruitful and multiply. In their original state of righteousness, the children born would be sinless, just like their parents. They would come to the sanctuary-garden with their parents, meet with God, and receive the fruit of the Tree of Life with them when they were able to eat solid food. As man multiplied in this state, he would be truly fruitful; his children would be faithful worshipers and have access to God’s sanctuary-garden and food.

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On November 9, 2023 By Bill Smith In Church, Theology, Worship 1

Meaningless Ritual?

We have all witnessed or even participated in what we call “meaningless worship;” people going through rote recitations in a mindless, heartless, and thankless way. They go to worship out of mere habit, trying to keep their parents off their backs, or with some superstitious view that they are keeping God at bay by giving him a little time each week. These people–maybe even we at times–approach worship in general and the Table of the Lord each week without reflection. Wherever we see this we tend to think that their worship is meaningless. But is it?

I understand what we mean when we speak about meaningless worship: worship is meaningless to the worshiper. But whether or not the worshiper reflects upon and responds to the call of God in worship does not invest or divest the worship of its meaning. The meaning of worship rests upon the word of God that establishes the worship. So, when Jesus, instituting the Lord’s Supper, says, “This is my body” and “This is my blood,” every person who eats and drinks at his Table participates in the body and blood of Christ. That is the reality of worship that can’t be changed by the disposition of the worshiper. Ours is to recognize what God has created by his word and conform our lives to it in faith. We attribute to the worshiper too much power if we think that his attitudes and response invest worship with meaning. The ritual meal was created by the word of God. That word is reality. Just as in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power establishing what is, so in the Supper the Word of God establishes the reality that the bread and wine are his body and blood. He did not say that they become his body and blood depending upon how the person responds. They are his body and blood, and each person who eats and drinks participates in that body and blood.

Participating in the body and blood of Christ in the Supper is a call to respond in faith because, though each and every person who eats and drinks at the Table of the Lord participates in the body and blood of Christ, they do not all participate to the same effect. This is where the response of the worshiper has meaning. Those who come to worship and give homage to God with their lips but with their hearts far from him, they eat and drink to their punishment. As in the church in Corinth whom Paul addressed concerning this issue, Christians cannot murder Christ by dividing up his body through selfishness and hostility, come to his Table, and believe that there will be no negative consequences. That is not eating and drinking in faith. On the other hand, those who love the brethren, who seek to serve others, who confess and repent of their sins, making their relationships right when they have gone wrong, they are coming to the Table in faith and may eat and drink with confident joy. The effect to those who eat without faith is death. The effect to those who eat in faith is life. It is the same Supper for all, but not all receive it to the same end.

So then, whether we engage in mindless and heartless worship or we pour ourselves out in worship, worship has meaning. Jesus has given it meaning by his creative word. Ours is to recognize this reality and conform our lives to it in joyful faith.

Image by Deborah Hudson from Pixabay

On November 8, 2023 By Bill Smith In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Women 1

Men, Marriage, and the Feminine Imperative

Gilder, George. Men and Marriage. Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2023.*

By 1973, the hightide of second-wave feminism had flooded the beaches of American culture. Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique eroded the shores of traditional female roles by naming and stirring up further domestic discontentment. Kate Millet wrote her dissertation-turned-book, Sexual Politics, which sought to overthrow the patriarchy with her Marxist revolutionaries through the National Organization of Women (313). Against the flood,, conservative George Gilder manned the dikes with Sexual Suicide in 1973. With the rise of intersectionality in third wave feminism, Gilder revised and re-titled the book Men and Marriage in 1986. Besides the 2023 Preface, Canon’s republication is the 1986 edition. While the stats are antiquated, his underlying principles and overall message are clear, and his prescience of future events based on trajectories have far exceeded what he probably imagined.

When Gilder first published Sexual Suicide and then doubled down in Men and Marriage, he infuriated all the right people, drawing the ire of the main players in the feminist movement and exposing the places in our culture where the latest iterations of feminism had taken root. Second-wave feminism fought for equality with men in the workplace and the sexual marketplace. Women wanted to be like men. While the elimination of the differences did not rise to the level that we see today, in which many are claiming that there is no such thing as a man or woman, the equality called for in second-wave feminism helped lay the foundations for what we are experiencing today. Women didn’t want the consequences of sexual promiscuity, and the creation of the birth control pill and swelling tsunami for the legalization of abortion gave their wombs the liberation to live sexually promiscuous lives.

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On October 26, 2023 By Bill Smith In Church, Theology, Worship Like

Ruminations on the Lord’s Supper: The Altar

Altars dot the biblical landscape. We find them early on in Scripture when Noah disembarks and builds an altar. Abraham moves through the land of promise, establishing altars throughout the land. When the people of God are delivered from Egypt, God makes Mt Sinai one big altar, complete with fire and smoke. As Mt Sinai becomes the sanctuary of God, the Tabernacle (Ps 68:17), it also looks like an altar with the glory cloud above it and in it (cf. Ex 40:34-38). In one sense, the entire Tabernacle is an altar as the fire and smoke of God’s presence fill it. So it was also with the Temple (2Chr 7:1-3). There were specific altars in both the Tabernacle and Temple that provided an exposition of the meaning of these structures from different perspectives. There was an altar of ascension offerings in the courtyard and an altar of incense just outside the veil or the doors that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies.

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On October 19, 2023 By Bill Smith In Church, Theology, Worship Like

The Ritual of the Lord’s Supper: The Command

The Lord’s Supper is a gift of God in Christ given to the church. In it Jesus memorializes his death for the sake of people. We touch, taste, and imbibe Christ himself in body and blood broken and poured out for our sins. In the meal the benefits of the once-for-all death of Christ are applied to us as often as we share this meal. At times the reality of the grace of Christ overwhelms us. We consider what great sinners we are and we wonder how he could love us that way that he does. A deep sense of unworthiness begins to overtake us.

As we feel that sense of unworthiness, the words of Paul to the Corinthians resonate in our minds: “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord” (1Cor 11:27). Our feelings of unworthiness must mean that we are not ready to share in this Table. We’re sure that there are hidden, unresolved sins somewhere. We may be unconscious of them, but they must be there. Then there was that dispute with my wife this week. There was that tension with my children. The anger that I displayed at the office wasn’t right. We have some real problems. Surely we’re not worthy to come to this Table. If we participate in this condition, then the fate of the Corinthians might be our own: sickness or even death.

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On October 12, 2023 By Bill Smith In Church, Theology, Worship Like

Ruminations on the Lord’s Supper: The Ritual

God is a God of rituals. He reveals his ritualistic nature in his actions in creation and his prescriptions for his people. Though there are variations on themes, fundamental rituals provide a stable context in which change moves history forward. Ten times in the opening chapter of history, we hear, “and God said.” Evening turns to morning in a ritualistic pattern forming a day. Seven days form a week, weeks form months, months form seasons, and seasons form years. Over and over again, the ritual continues.

As God forms new creation and moves the creation project forward through worship, he does so through prescribed rituals. From the details of offerings to the daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rituals, God’s people were called to be ritualistic. This doesn’t change in the New Covenant. Jesus reshapes the rituals of baptism and feast to reflect the new age, but both are still ritualistic.

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On September 21, 2023 By Bill Smith In Culture, Family and Children, Wisdom, Women Like

Good Wife, Good Life: Courageous, Adorned, Wise, & Praised

Recently, Lauren Boebert, “conservative” Republican House Representative from Colorado, has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Recently divorced from her husband, she was thrown out of a theater with her date for being obnoxious and publicly groping and being groped by her date. She’s a Bible-thumping, far-right-wing conservative. She has risen to some level of power and prestige on the national scene, but her seventeen-year marriage is left in the wake of her rise to power. Other conservative political women such as Christy Noem, governor of South Dakota, and Marjorie Taylor Green, Representative from Georgia, both have wrecked marriages while they try to manage the national “household.” If we were living in the time of Solomon, these women would be said to be “sitting in the gates of the city with the elders of the land.” The gates were the place where elders made judgments and enforced laws. They are movers and shakers, powerful women, and conservative feminists (is that possible?).

Proverbs 31 says there is a different way to be known and praised in the gates. It moves through personal character and care for the home. It’s the long game, but it is the wise game.

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On September 14, 2023 By Bill Smith In Culture, Family and Children, Men, Wisdom, Women Like

Good Wife, Good Life: Integrity, Industry, & Generosity

Despite what many masculine influencers tell young men today, marriage is good. There is no greater blessing in a man’s life than to have a good wife. While marriage has its own challenges, a good marriage makes life easier in many respects because you are facing challenges with mutual support and effort. A good wife makes a good life. (This, by the way, is very different than what is usually meant by “Happy wife. Happy life.” That’s another subject for another day.)

The good wife is described in rich, poetic detail in Proverbs 31. While not every woman will do exactly what this woman is said to do, women in general and wives in particular are to emulate the character of this woman.

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On September 7, 2023 By Bill Smith In Church, Discipleship, History, Theology 3

Disciple The Nations

“Christian Nationalism” has been a hot topic and a mixed bag over the past year or so. Intramural debates and social media wars are fought over theological foundations, hermeneutical presuppositions, implementation of Christian Nationalism, and even race concerning what constitutes a nation. While the answers to all those questions are important, I believe it is inarguable that Jesus, who has all authority in heaven and on earth and was promised the nations for his inheritance (Ps 2), not only desires but also commands that nations be Christian.

Before he ascended to heaven after his resurrection, Jesus, standing on a Galilean mountain, told his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. He is Lord over all creation. The nations of the earth are to acknowledge and submit to his lordship. Kings and all those in authority are to pay him tribute as vassals; that is, they are to acknowledge his lordship through offerings that are, in effect, a tax that recognizes that he owns everything and that they exist by his sovereign grace (Ps 72:10-11; Rev 21:24).

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