Joel Ellis, Author at Kuyperian Commentary

On December 2, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 2

The Lord of Creation Has Come

The Son of God became Man in order to redeem and elevate men so that we might become the sons of God. Many Christians think of the Incarnation only as a solution to a problem, a means of addressing and rectifying sin. But there is a larger context to the first Advent than just correction of a problem. The God-Man came to bring creation to its intended fullness and glory.

Yahweh made Man as his image in creation and gave him dominion over it. But that dominion was lost by means of transgression. The image was marred by sin. The lord of creation rebelled against the Creator, and creation turned against its lord. Now thorns and thistles grow from the ground instead of grain, and the animals once named by Adam flee in fear or turn with bared teeth against his sons. Adam was given authority to rule the world and power to command its obedience. But he lost the power to exercise that authority so that now his heirs cower in terror as the wind and waves batter their boat rather than rising to order the water gods to knock it off and behave.

The problem Christ came to address was not merely that you or I sometimes do bad things or fail to do the good things that we ought. He came to rescue the created universe, to redeem a world in bondage, to repair and restore the temple of God’s glory. Adam forfeited his power and position to grasp a greater, forbidden power, but the Serpent’s promise proved to be a lie. The world descended into chaos as the covenant of life and creation was broken and its curse fell upon us all. Men sought order by looking for a new lord who could master and control the madness. Demons of fire, earth, air, and water were reinvented as gods who could bring order to one’s life and blessing to one’s labor, for a price. Men worshiped creatures rather than the Creator and lost the blessings of communion, liberty, and glory they were made to enjoy.

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures (1Cor. 15:3). He was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised because of our justification (Rom. 4:25). This means more than merely that Jesus was crucified so that my sins could be forgiven and I could go to heaven when I die. It means more, not less, than a promise of personal salvation. Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved (John 3:17). God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses to them (2Cor. 5:19). For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom. 8:20-21).

We know these passages and dozens like them, but we often read them narrowly, only in the context of personal salvation. We behold the glories of Christ’s Incarnation and saving work as if through a keyhole. We describe the doctrine of the kingdom and of new creation as would those chained inside a cave, watching shadows on a wall, never realizing the larger reality that surrounds us. The problem is not that what we are saying about the gospel and Christ’s work is wrong. In most cases it is right and good and true. But it is often incomplete, a story of personal relationship, individual salvation, exclusive grace without the greater creational, covenantal, and cosmological context.

Christ is Immanuel, God in the flesh, divine glory united to humanity, but he is also Man united to God, the beginning of resurrection and new creation, the reconciliation of heaven and earth, Man as God made him to be, invested with authority, exercising power, in righteousness and holiness, to bring creation to its intended glory. When we see Jesus, we see God, but we also see Man, true man, the Last Adam, the head of the human race. The Creator made men to be lords of creation, and Jesus is Lord over all lords and King over all kings. Men were made as the image of God, and Christ is the exact image of his glory (Heb. 1:3). Men were made for life with God, to glorify and enjoy him forever (WSC 1), and our destiny from creation is attained by union with Jesus Christ in whom we become partakers of the divine nature (2Pet. 1:4).

The Church’s celebration of Advent is larger and fuller than merely western society’s celebration of Christmas. There is more to be seen than a baby in a manger or an elf on the shelf. The Creator has come into creation. The Redeemer has descended in compassion. The King has come in triumph and brings everlasting glory in his train. O come, let us adore him!

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n and nature sing,
and heav’n, and heav’n and nature sing.

Joy to the earth, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ,
while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat the sounding joy,
repeat, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
far as the curse is found,
far as the curse is found,
far as, far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
and makes the nations prove
the glories of His righteousness
and wonders of His love,
and wonders of His love,
and wonders, wonders of His love.
“Joy To the World! The Lord is Come!” Isaac Watts (1719)

On November 18, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 1

The Discipline of Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is not just an American holiday. It is that too, of course, and many of us anticipate celebrating it on Thursday. But the deliberate ritual of giving thanks is not just a national holiday. It is a spiritual discipline.

Biblical thanksgiving is historical, not conceptual. Thanksgiving in the Bible is never just gratitude in general for non-specific ideas. God’s people were taught to give thanks for specific things: God’s wonder, works, and word. The psalms teach us to thank God for who he is, what he has done, and what he has promised to do in the future. They recount specific stories from history. It may seem strange to sing-pray about creation (Psa. 104), the plagues on Egypt (Psa. 105), Israel’s persistent unfaithfulness (Psa. 106), or God killing Egyptian children and Canaanite kings (Psa. 135), but the point is that God has blessed us and cared for us at specific times, in specific places, and consistently throughout the centuries. We are not just to thank God in general. We are to recognize and recall specific instances of his grace and goodness, and give him thanks and praise for them.

Biblical thanksgiving is verbal, not merely emotional. On one occasion Jesus met ten lepers and directed them to go and show themselves to the priests (Luke 17:11-19). As they went, they discovered Jesus had healed them. Nine of them went on their way, but one immediately returned to Jesus “and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at His feet, giving [Jesus] thanks.” Do you suppose the other nine men were glad they had been healed? No doubt, they were. But they were not thankful, because thanksgiving is an act, not a thought, not a feeling. They might have felt grateful to the Lord, but they did not give thanks to him. Certainly our thanksgiving should be heartfelt, but biblical thanksgiving is more than a feeling of gratefulness. It is the communication of it.

Biblical thanksgiving is intentional, not haphazard. There is a specific ritual of thanksgiving. Scripture teaches us to “use our words” when thanking God. The psalms provide many different liturgies for thanksgiving. Consider Psalm 136, an antiphonal song in which the leader or choir sings the mighty acts of God and the congregation responds again and again: “For His mercy endures forever!” Thanksgiving is not merely something we are to do when we think of it or feel like it. There is a discipline to thanksgiving, a structure, a schedule for it. Biblical thanksgiving is a ritual. There may be many different ways to engage in it—Scripture does not provide only one but many models for giving thanks to God—but amid the varieties we see an overarching unity. We praise God for creation, his judgment of sin, his work of redemption, his forbearance, our ongoing sanctification, and for his promises of future glory. There is a gospel-logic to the Church’s thanksgiving. Not every element may be present in every instance, but the narrative of redemption ought to order our expressions of gratitude to God.

Biblical thanksgiving is continual, not occasional. “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1Thess. 5:16-17). God’s people are to be “giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 5:20). Every day, in every circumstance, at all times, we are to be giving thanks to God. We thank him for our pleasure and our pain, for our success and our sorrow, for our strength and our weakness. We know that he works “all things… together for good to those who love” him (Rom. 8:28). Not even evil can ultimately harm us, because God is using that evil to humble us and sanctify us. The things we imagine not even God could make us thankful for are reminders that we are not yet where we long to be, in the glorious presence of our resurrected Lord, so we can give thanks the Lord has not let us get too comfortable in our present state but ordered our lives so that we will fix our eyes on Jesus and “seek those things which are above” (Col. 3:1).

Every Lord’s Day is a day of thanksgiving. The Church has nothing of her own to offer God. The Divine Service is God’s service to us in renewing covenant and blessing his people through the means of grace. The service we offer is a sacrifice of thanksgiving and praise (Heb. 13:15). So bring your bulls of blessing and goats of gratitude, and place them on the altar of God. Light the fire of faith beneath them, and our prayers will ascend like the smoke of incense before God’s throne in heaven. Come, and “let us give thanks to Yahweh, for He is good! For His mercy endures forever” (Psa. 138:1).

On October 20, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 1

What Baptism Does

Many Christians have thought very little about baptism and its significance in their experience of salvation. If they think of baptism at all, it may be only as a personal decision they made to get baptized or in terms of what they think baptism does not mean or accomplish. The Westminster Confession of Faith says:

Baptism is a sacrament of the new testament, ordained by Jesus Christ, not only for the solemn admission of the party baptized into the visible church; but also, to be unto him a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, of his ingrafting into Christ, of regeneration, of remission of sins, and of his giving up unto God, through Jesus Christ, to walk in newness of life.
WCF 28.1

Baptism makes a person a member of the church (1Cor. 12:13). It is a formal rite, conferring actual membership in the Body of Christ. The person baptized may choose to neglect that membership or abandon it later in life. He may become an unbeliever and apostate, but he can never be a non-Christian.

Baptism is a sign and seal that a person has been united to Christ (Gal. 3:27). It certifies that a person has been grafted into Christ, made part of the covenant of grace, and now partakes of the vine. The baptized person may neglect that union or decide to renounce it later in life. He may be cut off from Christ due to unfruitfulness or fall from grace. But he must be connected to Christ before he can be severed from him. He must be a partaker of grace before he can fall away from it. He is connected to Christ in his baptism.

Baptism is a sign and seal that a person has been regenerated (Tit. 3:5). We know that a person may be outwardly baptized and yet remain inwardly unregenerate. Simon the sorcerer was. But the person who is baptized is part of the regeneration (Matt. 19:28) and shares in the resurrected Israel (Ezek. 37:1-14). He may go on living according to the old man of sin. He may reject the resurrection life which we are offered in Christ. But his baptism will forever testify that the new creation has begun.

Baptism is a sign and seal that one’s sins are forgiven (Acts 2:38). It is a symbolic washing which cleanses our souls and saves us from the judgment to come (1Pet. 3:21-22). The person baptized may choose to walk in unbelief and unrepentance, just as Israel did after they were baptized in the Red Sea, and if he does so, then his sins will not be pardoned. But baptism is a visible sign of God’s promise that our sins are forgiven and that God will remember his promises and not our transgressions on the day of judgment.

Baptism is a sign and seal of a covenant obligation (Rom. 6:3-4). The baptized person no longer belongs to himself. He has died with Christ to sin and been raised with Christ to live in obedience for the glory of God. He may choose to forsake that covenant obligation—he may be unfaithful to it—but he cannot deny that he is so obligated. A person does not choose the nation of his birth, but he is subject to its laws as a citizen nonetheless. So too, the person baptized is forever obligated to life under God’s covenant grace and the law of Christ.

Let us not forget or neglect the significance of our own baptism but be deliberately mindful of what it says to us and about us. Improve your baptism, not by doing it over and over again, but by meditating upon its truth, goodness, and beauty, and endeavoring to live in light of it.

On October 14, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 3

Thinking Christianly about Israel

The recent attacks by Hamas on the State of Israel and the rapidly expanding war in the Middle East that has followed have prompted many Christian preachers and pew-warmers to try their hand at theo-political punditry. This, by itself, is not necessarily a bad thing. The last few years have rightly undermined confidence in the competence of credentialed experts in many fields. We should bear in mind, however, that the fact the experts are making it up as they go is not an argument for the superiority of uninformed and ill-thought out opinions.

Many dispensationalists, predictably, see the latest violence in Israel as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy and harbinger of the last days. The fact this is how they have interpreted every instance of violence involving Israel since their particular prophetic perspective appeared in the mid-1800s does not seem to dim their enthusiasm and confidence in reading the tea leaves of providence.

Christians who lean left politically (or long ago toppled over) can be heard making arguments about nuance, context, and the evils of colonization, as if any of those things had anything to do with deliberate war crimes against a civilian population, rape, kidnapping, multilation of the dead, and calls for systematic genocide against an ethnic group. If this argument is relevant, I suppose we might offer the same nuance and context for the Holocaust and Final Solution carried out by Nazi Germany. Maybe there was something to their claims about the Jews and their manipulation and control of financial markets after all.

Even among, more politically conservative, Reformed Christians there seems to be a perverse need to state the obvious. Ethnic Israel is no longer the covenant Israel of God and The political State of Israel is not God’s chosen people—believers in Jesus are. That is true, and there is a place for noting it. So many Christians in the west have been indoctrinated by dispensational theology that we must be prepared to offer such clarifications. But what does such a claim have to do with recent violence and the present war? Why would we make this clarification our emphasis at such a time? Is it helpful or appropriate?

How are we to think christianly about ethnic Israel? The Jews are not accepted by God simply on the basis of their heritage. Membership in the covenant is delineated by faith in Christ, not merely by biological lineage.

For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
(Galatians 3:26-29)

This does not, however, mean there is no longer any distinction to be found between ethnic Jews and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The same apostle who wrote Galatians 3 also clearly affirmed:

What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God. For what if some did not believe? Will their unbelief make the faithfulness of God without effect? Certainly not!
(Romans 3:1-4a)

He goes on in the same epistle to the Roman saints:

I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen.
(Romans 9:3-5)

These historical, bibliographical, religious, and spiritual advantages do not mean that Jewish people are saved apart from faith in Christ.

Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved.
(Romans 10:1)

The Jews must embrace their Messiah, but Paul says they will.

For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: “The Deliverer will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob; For this is My covenant with them, When I take away their sins.”Concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but concerning the election they are beloved for the sake of the fathers. For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy. For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.
(Romans 11:25-32)

All Israel will be saved. All Israel, i.e. ethnically Jewish people, as Jews, will come to faith in Christ. This means that while the wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles has been broken down in Christ, ethnic identities still exist. The fact that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people in the way they once were does not mean they have merely been absorbed into a mass of undifferentiated humanity. That is not what Scripture claims, quite the contrary.

Even under the Mosaic economy, the Jews were in proximity to covenant blessings that could only be fully and finally possessed by faith (John 8:31-58). Those who trusted in their ethnic heritage would not be accepted by God. They were sons of the Devil, not of Abraham. Abraham’s children have always been defined by their participation in Abraham’s faith. What has changed is not the recognition of Jewish ethnicity but the expansion of Abrahamic blessings to all nations through the resurrection and reign of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah.

God does not have two people groups with separate identities and destinies, as dispensationalism claims. But the Bible does acknowledge the persistence of the Jewish people, their distinctiveness as an ethnic group, and their future conversion to faith in Christ. Their destiny is not distinct from the Church of God but is rather to ultimately be united with the Church of God.

How are we to think about the recent attacks against Israel and their war with violent Islamists who openly state their intention to exterminate the Jews? All of the theology explained above may be true, and it may be helpful to Christians who are ill-taught on these issues. But it is of little use or relevance in responding to the kind of godless slaughter we have lately seen. Christians are sometimes guilty of the kind of theology as comfort practiced by Job’s friends. Miserable comforters are you all (Job 16:2).

Would Christian pastors have chosen September 12, 2001 as an opportune time to remind us that many of those killed the day before were unbelievers and now in Hell? Would it be helpful to observe, what is undoubtedly true, that American believers have more in common with Arab Christians than unbelieving New Yorkers who worked in the World Trade Center? The death of a neighbor’s child is not the time to lecture them about the mysteries of election. The young woman may have been dressed inappropriately, but the hours after her rape are not the best moment to discuss the importance of modesty.

It is true that American believers have more in common with a Palestinian Christian than they do with a secular Jew. It is also true that a believer has more in common with an American Christian than with his unbelieving cousin. But it would be naive and inappropriate to imagine that because one person (or group) is unbelieving, there can be no special connection to them. I have family members who are not walking with Christ, and I have far more affection and compassion for them than for anonymous Christians I have never heard about or met.

The Jews are the Christian’s cousins, and one day the family will be reunited. Christianity is a Hebraic faith. There is no denying the impact of Hellenistic language, philosophy, and culture on various aspects of the Christian tradition, but insofar as the two streams of Hebraism and Hellenism stand in opposition to one another in interpretation of Scripture, typology, liturgy, and ethics, the Christian faith stands in line with the tradition of the Hebrews, not the Greeks. Christians worship a Jew as the Son of God. Our spiritual fathers, first teachers, and foundational Scriptures are all Jewish. This is not to diminish the way in which God used the Greek language and culture to advance the cause of Christ. It is not to deny that the Jewish people, by and large, rejected their Messiah, fell under God’s condemnation, and have been estranged from the covenant of promise. But we should affirm that the Christian Church has more in common with modern Jews than with the average Gentile unbeliever, and we have vastly more in common with the State of Israel than we do with militant, Islamic terrorists.

One does not have to be a Zionist, neo-con, or dispensationalist to support Israel in its war with Hamas. The State of Israel is largely secular, but the conduct and stated mission of Hamas is explicitly, indefensibly evil. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses, no room for context, nuance, or negotiation. The Arab-Israeli conflict may be complicated. The Israel-Hamas war is not. To think christianly means not only thinking theologically and covenantally; it requires us to think with ethical clarity.

On October 7, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 2

What Happens on Sunday

*_{Photo courtesy Frank Cone at pexels.com}*

Every week Christians gather around the world to worship the true God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Their songs and prayers ascend to heaven as incense, and God’s word and grace fall to the earth like thunder, lightning, and rain. God speaks, and his people answer. God blesses, and the saints are renewed. God judges, and the Church is vindicated. God appears in his glory, and the Body of Christ shines with reflected radiance.

What happens on Sundays in Christian churches cannot be understood merely by what we see with our eyes. In fact, many believers do not realize the supernatural event that they participate in every Lord’s Day. We walk in the midst of angels. We sing praise with saints who surround heaven’s throne. We are strengthened as the Spirit moves upon us and in us, arousing love, increasing faith, and deepening hope.

The Church does battle every Sunday against the world, the flesh, and the demons. The spiritual hosts of wickedness are arrayed against us, but they are vanquished through faith exercised in worship and obedience. We pray against the darkness, and those prayers become beams of light, penetrating dark spaces and frightening the fallen sons of God. We sing psalms, and the walls of the enemy’s stronghold crack and fall. The war is not over. In some ways it has just begun. But the victory is assured having been won by our Savior who destroyed sin and Death’s power from the inside.

The Church is Christ’s Bride, but it is also his Body. She is both the one whom he rescues and the hands and feet by which he makes war. The Church is a Dragon-Slayer, not passive, not effeminate, but embodying the risen and ascended Christ who lives, reigns, rules, and judges in and through his people. The Church sings war psalms because she is at war. She sings royal psalms because she serves the world’s true King.

The Church is an army, and worship is war. But the weapons of our warfare are not carnal or earthly. They are psalms and prayers, confession of sin and confession of faith, the word preached and believed and obeyed, the sacraments applied, the covenant lived in our homes and communities every day. When the Church forgets who she is, where she is, and what she is doing in worship, she becomes worldly, effeminate, passive, and ineffectual. But the spiritual reality persists. On the Lord’s Day God descends to meet with his people, and his Church ascends Mt. Zion. Prepare your heart with joy to meet the living God.

On September 22, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture Like

Praying in the Dark

How many times have you faced an overwhelming and seemingly hopeless scenario, only to look back later and recognize the kind (though difficult) providence of God at work in that situation? Most of us have probably had moments in our lives that we imagined we could not endure, when despair had a death grip on our hearts, when sorrow and fear seemed certain to drown us. But God. The Lord is rich in mercy, and he promises to work all things together for the good of those who love him (Rom. 8:28), but that sovereign good does not always appear dramatically. In fact, sometimes we may miss it entirely. God is there, but as in the book of Esther, he stands hidden amid the shadows. Somehow we survive. Somehow we begin to breathe again and move on. We did not perceive the moment of rescue. We cannot put our finger on a sudden deliverance. We simply came to the moment of defeat and despair, and then the moment passed, and we were still alive.

When did you look back and realize you had survived? Was it the next time you faced an unwinnable trial or unendurable adversity? Did you think back to the last time you were in a similar situation and only then reflect on the fact that God had brought you safely through it, even though you took little notice at the time?

I was reflecting on this recently while lying awake worrying and praying in the middle of the night. It was almost a moment of deja vu, but this wasn’t a glitch in the Matrix. I realized I had prayed to the Lord in the midst of similar anguished anxiety, many times before, and often in the middle of the night. You’ve probably been there too. “It’s me again, Lord. I’m worried about something, and I’m not sure you can fix this one.” Because this new worry is so different from all those that came before, right? We are justified in our sin of unbelief because the Lord has only delivered us 7,327 times, and everyone knows it is the 7,328th that is the really hard one.

If we are lying awake at night praying in bed, it’s probably not because we are praying the psalms. Sometimes we may do that too, but more often those middle of the night prayers are both prompted and dominated by the worry and fear from which Christ’s victory and sovereign rule have set us free. But there we are again, doubting his ability to rescue us, returning to the slavery of fear that is so familiar to us because we wore its chain so long. Anxious prayer usually centers on my worries, fears, and concerns. Even if they are not about me, per se, but my wife, my children, my family, or brethren, those prayers still focus, in large part if not in whole, on the immediate crisis that drove sleep away and compelled fervent prayer.

There was a man in the first church I pastored who related to me the story of when he first spent an entire night in prayer. He had never attempted or thought to do so until his young daughter was injured and taken to the hospital where doctors worked to save her life. Her father found it easy to stay awake and pray all that night.

Personal prayers in times of crisis are good and appropriate, a means of grace for battling doubt and fear. It is right that we pray earnestly, even if fearfully, because even when we are sinfully anxious, praying about it is an act of obedience to God. Such prayer confesses that I am a sinner who cannot cope with or carry this burden of sorrow. I cannot withstand the temptation to doubt in such cases, so we pray, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!”

Our prayers in the midst of crisis are important, but they ought to arise within the larger context of a life devoted to prayer. If the only time we pray is when we are fearful, we will find our prayers weak, and we may discover little comfort in them. This is when we open the Psalter, retrieving lines from our memories if praying in a dark bedroom, or stumbling downstairs and opening the prayer book of King Jesus, reading, singing, and praying God’s word and promises back to him. Suddenly we discover that our fears and trials are nothing new. No temptation has overtaken you except such as in common to man. God’s people have been here before, and we are praying with them. It is not only my children who need God’s gracious intervention; it is God’s children in India, Eritrea, North Korea, Sudan, and Canada. I am neither the first nor the last nor the only one at this present time who faces a seemingly unbearable situation. I am praying with the saints throughout the world. We are interceding for each other: I for them, and they for me, even if we have never met and do not know each other’s names.

These prayers in private crisis grow out of lives of ordinary, everyday prayer. Morning and evening sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, confession and intercession, supplication and meditation on God’s word, works, and wonder. On the Lord’s Day God summons his people to worship in order that he might bless us. Together the Church offers her prayers to the Father in the Name of the Son with the help of the Holy Spirit. God knows the needs of every individual. He heard your prayers at midnight and the deep and unutterable cries within your heart even now. But now we are not praying alone in our bed or closet. The Church has gathered and entered the Holy Place. Together with one voice we cry: “Lord, hear our prayer!” And he does. And he will. Not just our prayers on Sunday. Not just our prayers at the family dinner table. Not just our prayers in the middle of the night. Our faithful God hears all of them, and accepts them, not because we are righteous in ourselves. We are the doubters and unbelievers who imagine this hardship will be different. Maybe the Lord won’t show up this time around. But he always has. He always will. He is patient with us, even though we are often impatient with him.

It takes faith to see God’s faithfulness in our lives, and perhaps that is why we so often fail to perceive it. The same lack of faith that fills us with fear and despair in crisis makes us unable to recognize the quiet but powerful providence that has delivered us time and time again. Those prayers in the middle of the night are a means of grace. They change the world and events in our lives, to be sure, but they change us most of all. Someone once said we cannot pray one way and live another for very long. So as we confess our fears and doubts and beg God for mercy once again, his Spirit strengthens us, enabling us to see the past providence that we had overlooked or forgotten and assuring us that the Lord will be near us this time as well. I will never leave you nor forsake you. This is God’s promise, so we can continue to pray with boldness, even in the midst of anxiety, and be confident that he will hear and, once again, come to bless us.

On September 9, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 2

Election and the Way of Obedience

The Christian does not discover his election by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it in the experience of faith and obedience as a baptized member of the Church. Peter said, “Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure” (2Pet. 1:10). Do you know that you were chosen by God for salvation before the foundation of the world? Are you sure? How can you be? Maybe your recurring temptations, frequent weakness of faith, and besetting sins are an indication that you were not chosen by God, are not born from above, and will not be acknowledged by Christ on the last day. How can you have assurance of grace when you fail so often and so miserably, and if you think you do not, how could anyone so arrogant imagine they are saved? Assurance may be theoretically possible, but a truly humble Christian would know it is practically impossible. In fact, to claim to have assurance of salvation would be presumptuous, right?

Just in case you lost the thread above, the position that assurance of salvation is presumptuous was an argument the Roman Church made against the Protestant Reformers. Contrary to this faux humility, the Westminster Confession boldly affirms: “such as truly believe in the Lord Jesus, and love him in sincerity, endeavoring to walk in all good conscience before him, may, in this life, be certainly assured that they are in the state of grace” (18.1) and that with an “infallible assurance” (18.3). Will there be hypocrites who are self-deceived? Of course, but they are not the ones who agonize over their salvation and doubt their possession of grace for grief over their sins. Only born again people do that, because Jesus takes all the fun out of sin. Hypocrites are still able to enjoy their rebellion, at least, for a time, but the believer feels overwhelming guilt and shame over his transgressions, overwhelming but for God’s mercy.

Look again at Peter’s exhortation to “make your call and election sure.” How do we do so? By a Protestant version of penance and self-flagellation? No, by exercising our faith in obedience and growth in grace. After reminding the brethren that God’s power has given to us “all things that pertain to life and godliness” and “exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature” (2Pet. 1:3-4), the apostle then enjoins us: “for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love” (2Pet. 1:5-7). Then Peter thunders:

For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. (2Pet. 1:8-11)

Christian, you have been baptized in the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You belong to your faithful Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. You have died with Christ and been raised with him. You no longer live for yourself; you live for the One who died for you and rose again. These are objective truths, not subjective maybes. Live in light of your covenant status and of what God says you are in Christ.

The Lord’s eternal decree with regard to your soul and mine is inaccessible. You cannot look into the Book of Life, nor can I. We perceive his electing grace by its persevering work within us. We gain assurance through the means of grace, the Word of God—as he is read, heard, learned, embraced, prayed, sung, eaten, and obeyed. “Make your call and election sure.” How? By believing in Jesus, and disbelieving the idols in which men trust. By repenting of your sins, but never of your decision to follow Jesus. By loving your wife, children, brethren, neighbor, and enemy, and laboring in prayer that the blessings of heaven might be poured upon them. By taking dominion in the Name of Christ: building, planting, watering, working, and waiting without growing weary in well-doing. By going to Church and being the Church: singing, confessing, praying, heeding, and rejoicing as the elect person you are.The Christian does not discover his election unto salvation by means of rigorous introspection. He finds it by faith, in the exercise of obedience, as a member of the covenant. Assurance does not come in a flash of prophetic insight at a moment in time, but every day in the disciple’s prayer and practice: Thy will be done, on earth, and in my life, as it is in heaven.

On September 2, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture Like

An Encouraging Thought

J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is a work of Christian imagination structured and permeated by a biblical worldview that will ensure that series of books endures for many generations as a true classic. Many books and essays have been written over the years discussing the Christian worldview in the Middle Earth trilogy. One of them, Donald William’s An Encouraging Thought, takes its title from Gandalf’s remark to Frodo in Chapter Two of Book I in The Fellowship of the Ring:

“Behind that there was something else at work, beyond any design of the Ring-maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”

Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic and inarguably my second favorite papist next only to Chesterton. If you asked Tolkien whether he was a Calvinist, no doubt he would have scoffed and denied it in an inimitably British sort of way. (I trust that Tolkien, Chesterton, and Calvin have made up their differences by now, and if not, will eventually do so in the dazzling brightness of the beatific vision.) Tolkien, like Chesterton, knew only the desiccated form of joyless puritanism, just as many of the Reformers saw the worst expressions of Roman sacerdotalism and reacted, rightly, against it. But what Calvin, Chesterton, and Tolkien’s Middle Earth trilogy share is a cheerful vision of divine sovereignty.

Tolkien was not, self-consciously, a Calvinist. He was a Christian, and as such, he could not help but be Calvinistic when he thought of divine providence. Calvin was not self-consciously a Calvinist either, and he would probably be offended, dismayed, and inclined to righteous invective if he saw us using his name in such a sectarian way. What these men had in common, besides a genuine love and reverence for Christ, was a sense of the Maker’s grandeur. They served a God who is not only in charge but actively and irresistibly in control of all that is and ever will be. God’s sovereignty did not preclude Sauron’s wickedness, Saruman’s treachery, Gollum’s sin-induced insanity, Boromir’s idolatry, or Denethor’s despair. Yet over, above, behind, and around all of these actors on the stage stood the Maker, standing in the shadows, guiding the story “by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will… yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (WCF 3.1). Tolkien would not have appreciated me citing the Westminster Confession in interpreting the events of Middle Earth — he did not intend it to be an allegory, and it is not — but read Chapter 5 of the Confession on Providence and then try to explain that The Lord of the Rings is not an epic myth about the providence of God. You cannot do it, because that’s exactly what the Ring trilogy is.

It seems to me we need a wee bit less (by which I mean a whole lot less) theological sectarianism and a greater sense of the size, strength, and sovereignty of the God we serve. Reformed Christians have far more in common, in this regard, with traditional Roman Catholics like Tolkien and Chesterton than any of us have with the evangellyfish in our community and their worship leader who paints his fingernails. I say this not as someone who is less committed to the tenets of historic Calvinism but as someone who has become more convinced the longer he has been a self-conscious Calvinist that those tenets of divine sovereignty are simply biblical and christian and are shared, implicitly if not explicitly, to a greater or lesser degree, by all those who love Christ and take the word of God seriously. Tolkien was not a Calvinist, and one day when we all have died, none of us will be either. We will be simply followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, children of God, and brothers and sisters in his household.

The Enemy who forged the ring of power did not intend for it to fall into the hands of a hobbit from the Shire or to come into the possession of his nephew. Readers of the trilogy will remember that it was not the strength or goodness of either Frodo or Bilbo that saved the day in the end. It could not be. Both eventually fell under the ring’s power, but another hand not only guided but determined its destruction. It was the same hand who placed the ring in Bilbo’s palm inside a dark cavern and on a chain around Frodo’s neck on that long, cheerless journey to Mordor. It was One greater than Sauron and Saruman and Gollum and Wormtongue all combined. And it was this same power that led to the denouement, which happens not on Mt. Doom and in the destruction of Mordor but later in Book VI of The Return of the King when Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin return to their beloved Shire.

We serve a mighty God, the Maker of heaven and earth, Lord of creation, Master of history, Author of the Future, who holds eternity in his hand. Tolkien was a literary master, but he was only a sub-creator, as he himself admitted. What makes The Lord of the Rings true and timeless is not his creativity but the story’s resonance with biblical revelation. It reflects the glory, power, and wisdom of the true Myth-Maker, the God who wrote the story of cosmological history, and whose breath gave us life as characters on that stage.

On August 11, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture Like

Deeper Magic, Greater Joy

*^{Photo courtesy Skylar Kang, pexels. com}*

C. S. Lewis wrote about the “deeper magic” in The Chronicles of Narnia. The idea first appears in the first book of the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. There, immediately after Aslan’s resurrection, the Great Lion explains that the Witch’s apparent triumph was destined to fail because, although she knew and could use some magic, “there is a magic deeper still which she did not know” since “her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.” Lewis is contrasting the demonic powers of this age with the eternal power that belongs to God alone. Evil may seem to gain the upper hand, and it certainly appeared so to the disciples immediately after Jesus’ death on the cross, but there is a “deeper magic” which stretches back beyond time, before the foundation of the world, when God chose a people to save by the sacrifice of his Son.

I suppose I am at risk of alienating some of you since I have been informed by more than one Reformed brother that discussions of “magic,” in general, and Lewis’s horrid allegory, in particular, are incompatible with a biblical, orthodox, and Reformed understanding of the faith. I do not wish to offend or quarrel with any of my brethren, I would only point out that their antipathy is not the result of a pre-modern, biblical worldview but actually is the influence of “very up-to-date and advanced people” who wear “a special kind of underclothes.” Modernists, like Eustace Clarence Scrubb, can be saved, but their salvation will involve not only the forgiveness of their priggishness but also the restoration of their imagination. But I digress.

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On July 28, 2023 By Joel Ellis In Culture 2

On the First Day of Every Week: The Case for Weekly Communion

*Photo courtesy pexels.com | Pavel Danilyuk*

Other authors have addressed the question of weekly communion here at Kuyperian Commentary before, including Pastor Uri Brito earlier this year. I do not presume to improve upon their work but would like to add a few thoughts in arguing for the Church’s weekly celebration of the Eucharist.

An increasing number of Reformed churches are embracing weekly communion at the Lord’s Table. This is a good thing, in my judgment, and a more consistent expression of our Reformed heritage and the desire to be always reforming in light of Scripture. But this is very different from what many Christians are accustomed to. Many evangelical Baptist and Reformed congregations have never eaten the Supper weekly. It is only celebrated infrequently in many Presbyterian churches and not without prior warnings and extensive preparation by the members of the congregation. On what basis is the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper to be advocated?

There is no question that the early Church partook of the Supper every first day of the week. The historical evidence is beyond dispute. The Didache, written between A.D. 50-150, provides explicit evidence of the Church’s weekly communion.

But every Lord’s day do ye gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure. But let no one that is at variance with his fellow come together with you, until they be reconciled, that your sacrifice may not be profaned. For this is that which was spoken by the Lord: In every place and time offer to me a pure sacrifice; for I am a great King, saith the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.
–Didache XIV, ANF 7.381

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