Theology Archives - Page 17 of 67 - Kuyperian Commentary

On March 17, 2022 By Bill Smith In Theology, Wisdom Like

Bloody Hands

Whenever we hear of or see innocent people suffer or die at the hands of the ruthless, our sympathies trigger grief for them and deep ire for the perpetrators. We know it isn’t right. We feel the injustice in our bones. We long for order to be restored by the assailant paying for his crime. But why? Why do we have this deep sense of the need for justice and, therefore, hatred of the suffering and death of the innocent? We long for justice and hate the destruction of the innocent because we are the image of God who hates hands that shed innocent blood.

In Proverbs 6, Solomon describes a deformed, decaying body, a body that is the object of God’s hatred. This body can be an individual who embodies all of these sins in his own person, or it can be a body-politic, a society, a world-within-the-world that is disordered and is in the process of being de-created. The son being instructed is to be transforming his own body and bodies-politic into the kingdom of God. To do this, he must avoid allowing the corruption of these seven abominations to control him or those bodies he reigns.

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On March 10, 2022 By Bill Smith In Theology, Worship 1

Holy Worship: Psalm 99

Contemplation of God’s holiness can be terrifying. When we meditate on the blazing purity, the uncompromised integrity, the sinlessness of an all-powerful God who is also the judge of the earth, seeing our impure selves in the light of his presence is frightening. We read and, in some small measure, can identify with the story of Isaiah in the Temple, who, seeing YHWH enthroned and hearing the seraphim crying, “Holy, Holy, Holy,” proclaimed his desperate grief at his undone-ness because of his impurity (Isa 6.1-7).

God’s holiness is dangerous; so dangerous that during the time before Christ, he kept his people from it through distance and a veil. His purity destroys all impurity. It would seem that his holiness would not be an encouragement to worship, to draw near to him, but rather a reason not to do so. Who wants to be shamed and then destroyed? Yet there is something attractive to us about God’s holiness; something that draws us in like a moth to a flame; something so beautiful about it that, despite the pain we experience through seeing our deep impurities and dissatisfactions it reveals about us, we are drawn to it.

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On March 3, 2022 By Bill Smith In Culture, Politics, Theology, Wisdom 1

Live Not By Lies

“I don’t trust the media. I don’t trust our political leaders. I don’t trust foreign governments. I don’t trust my own government. I don’t trust the mob. I trust almost no one at this point and that’s not because I want to be this way. It’s just because I’ve been paying attention.”[1] This is the lament of Matt Walsh regarding our current cultural environment. Who can blame him? It is quite difficult not to be cynical when government officials along with their allies in much of the media are using the language playbook of 1984. Reversals on positions (at least with words) happen so fast that your brain is disoriented with a type of cognitive whiplash. The conspiracy theorists that we once believed were insane have become the prophets of culture. The difference between many conspiracy theories and the news of the day is about six months. We live by lies at the highest levels of our society, and it is destroying us.

Solomon told us it would. God hates a “lying tongue” and a “false witness who breathes out lies” (Pr 6.17, 19). With the smorgasbord of sins to put in his seven-fold list, Solomon includes two forms of lying. God must really hate lying.

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On March 2, 2022 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom Like

Proud Eyes

Solomon instructs his princely son in Proverbs so that he might complete the mission of dominion given to man; namely, to form and fill the world that God gave to the stewardship of man (see Gen 1.28; Ps 115.16). This will take wisdom, the ability to see how everything should relate, and the skill to put everything in right relationship. This wisdom begins and matures in the fear of Yahweh, loving Yahweh and his discipline and zealously guarding his instruction. As the son submits to Yahweh, the mission will progress; the world will grow and come together to reach its intended purpose. If the son rebels, rejecting the wisdom of the Father, he will reap chaos and destruction, not only for himself but for the world. Adam’s story is a clear picture of this.

The seven-fold structure of the abominations in Proverbs 6.16-19 fit this theme of world-building, echoing the structure of the original week of history. However, Solomon is instructing by the contrary. If you want to know how to de-create the world, then these seven abominations will tell you. These are the sins the son must avoid.

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On February 24, 2022 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Theology, Wisdom Like

A Healthy Appetite

In the beginning, God made us hungry. Some of the first words spoken to man were the joyful declaration of the gift of food from a loving Father: “Behold! I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food” (Ge 1.29). Our need for food is not a flaw in our design but a glorious feature. Food and our appetite for it are ever-present witnesses of our creatureliness and dependence upon our Creator. Through food, God doesn’t merely sustain our lives but gives us abundant life. Food is given for us to enjoy; not merely the myriads of tastes and textures, but because through food we have communion with God himself.

The ordination of food as communion began at the Tree of life, continued through the worship feasts of Israel (Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles, New Moon, Sabbath), and is experienced now at the Lord’s Supper. History comes to an end in a feast with God. Food and drink, being a part of creation, are good. Anyone who teaches you that any food or any drink is off-limits for proper use is teaching you a demonic doctrine. Everything created by God is good and nothing to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1Tm 4.1-5).

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On February 10, 2022 By Uri Brito In Theology, Wisdom Like

Episode 98, The Legacy and Stories of Rev. Dr. Gregg Strawbridge

Welcome to Kuyperian Commentary, this is episode 98. I am host Uri Brito.

The Rev. Dr. Gregg Strawbridge died a couple of weeks ago. Those of us who knew him well have mourned profusely these last 14 days. We have lost a friend, a mentor, and a titan of the Christian faith. His presence in the CREC was palpable every time we met. He was kind, gracious, studious, a Presbyterian of high caliber, a churchman with unspeakable talent, a pastor with theological and pastoral inclinations which made him a remarkable gem in every way.

When we were in Lancaster, PA last week, we had the opportunity to gather, remember, grieve and laugh over Gregg’s stories. A gracious host provided the second floor filled with several fine beer taps and we told stories and rejoiced in the life of our brother.

I thought I would bring some of the men who were trained directly by Gregg Strawbridge to join me for this episode and do a bit of the story-telling bit from a perspective of folks who spent enormous time with him and who now shepherd their own flocks as a result of the Gregg Strawbridge School of Theology.

On January 24, 2022 By Mark Horne In Theology Like

Against Nature

In Romans 2:27-28 we read:

Then he who is physically uncircumcised but keeps the law will condemn you who have the written code and circumcision but break the law. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical.
ESV

This translation translates as “physically” and “physical” two entirely different words. In verse 28, Paul designates “true” Jews as having more than a circumcision en sarki “in flesh.” Paul’s use of the term “flesh” is complex. The word has a bunch of biblical associations beyond “physical.”

But in this post I want to consider his terminology in verse 27. There he refers to Gentiles as the ek phuseos akrobustia—the “by nature uncircumcision.”

What?

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On January 13, 2022 By Bill Smith In Culture, Family and Children, Politics, Pro-Life, Theology 1

Blasphemy Laws

While people condemn the blasphemy laws in God’s law as being barbaric and severe, every society has blasphemy laws. These are the laws that tell you what you can and can’t say about certain people and subjects; “gods” you must worship or, at least, refrain from criticizing. These laws are not arbitrary. They tell you who defines the culture and what the culture is. They tell you who the gods of the culture are; that is, what or who is worshiped. Sometimes these laws are codified and enforced by authorities. At other times they are general cultural practices that are endorsed by the authorities’ unwillingness to stand against injustice. Pressure by activists is put on companies to conform to their morality. If they don’t conform, they will be canceled or attacked. Whether codified or passive among government officials, or a loud, powerful, cultural movement, blasphemy laws exist, and violators will be prosecuted.

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On January 7, 2022 By Bill Smith In Discipleship, Theology Like

Jesus’ Baptism & Ours

If we would not be too proud to admit it, many of us American Protestants are scared of water. Whenever people start talking about what happens in baptism instead of what doesn’t happen in baptism, many of us start twisting in our seats. Images of superstitious priestcraft and mechanical guarantees of salvation start to swirl through our heads, and we have violent reactions like any good Protestant.

Some of us have seen people presume upon God because they have been baptized. That kind of abuse of baptism has caused us to go to the opposite extreme and reject any effect of baptism at all. Besides that, we know that God wouldn’t use water on our bodies to do anything substantive in regards to our salvation. That all happens directly by the Holy Spirit without any sort of means.

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On December 30, 2021 By Bill Smith In Church, Theology, Wisdom Like

The Church: The Manifold Wisdom of God

The created order was in disarray. This disorder was deeper and more serious than the unformed and unfilled state of the original creation. While the darkness and the deeps required a great amount of wisdom and power to overcome, they were not hostile. Sin changed all that. Sin introduced a death-sting that fought to keep things separated that God intended to be unified. The sleep of Adam from which he awoke to the glory of Eve became a sleep from which he would not awake. He would lie there ripped in half without resurrection glory. He would return to the dust from which he was made.

Sin’s death was not limited to our individual bodies. This death was the enemy of life as God intended. Anything that separated what God purposed to be joined together was death that needed to be overcome. From the beginning, God purposed that all humanity be caught up in his eternal fellowship as Father, Son, and Spirit as one worldwide family. Proverbs 8.30-31 poetically allude to this as Yahweh and Wisdom mutually delight in one another and in the sons of men. This delightful union and communion are what Paul speaks of to the Ephesians when he says that God’s eternal plan revealed in Christ Jesus was to unite all things in Christ (Eph 1.9-10). Without the presence of sin, this would have been a friendly process of maturity (a truth I explained in the article Incarnation Anyway). Sin latched on to this process, fighting it tooth-and-nail, refusing to allow death to move into the resurrection of unity between God and man and man with man.

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