Hey, everybody.
Welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast,
our series on the Westminster
Catechism.
We’re grateful that you’re here.
Thank you for joining us as we continue to
look through this document,
a heritage piece for the Presbyterian Church for the Reformed Faith.
As we continue in it,
we get to a section today that is going to cover a significant
amount of ground, two things that we put together,
two themes.
The first is the sort of application
of faith to the afterlife,
to what happens after death.
If you were with us last session or maybe
if you have a chance to go back and watch that,
it was a conversation about the benefits of faith
in the here and now,
in what does faith mean to us as we live our life.
Now we turn for a short
while on what it means to us,
the promise of faith after our life in this place is over.
And then the Catechism moves on to the Ten Commandments and we can point to the bridge
between them and you can see if you think it’s a good one or not,
but that is the direction we take today, Michael.
Yeah, it’s going to be an interesting conversation as we continue on this
flow and maybe that’s the only thing to say here is that this is laid out in an order.
We, for a reason, began with that idea of God at the very beginning,
that God should always be the
starting place and we talked about human brokenness and sinfulness and we talked about Jesus Christ
and how we understand his salvific work and so now,
as we understand who Jesus is and why that’s
significant, Clint, we’re going to ask the question today,
you know, what both present but even more
eternal impact does that have on those who believe?
I appreciate that the Catechism doesn’t spend a lot
of time there, Michael.
I mean, I think one of the fascinations of Christians has been
what happens when we die,
what is heaven like,
what is the afterlife?
In the big picture of being
saved, what does it look like on the other side of the life that we live?
And I think most Christians
who take the question seriously are surprised to learn how little the Scripture and our tradition
has really given those questions.
I think it’s as if we’ve said those matters are firmly in God’s hands.
We have promises,
we don’t have details,
we know there is goodness,
we trust that goodness and yet, I mean, this is fascinating for Christians,
even for non-believers,
you know, you look at the movies, the books,
near-death experiences, people really are intrigued
by the idea that we could know something about that now but it is,
I think, telling Michael the silence of the Bible in that regard and the reluctance of our tradition to say more than we actually know.
I think both of those things are sort of cautionary flags for us.
Yeah, it’s a tough, tough conversation to have with folks because I do think
people make some assumptions about what’s in the Bible.
We are drawn towards some of those
eternal out-of-sight ideas by nature,
I think, of being human.
But I might remind you that the
Garden of Eden is very much this story in which,
you know, we get hung up on,
you know, what kind of fruit was it?
But if you really hear the story,
the thing that Adam and Eve are tempted with
is the knowledge of things beyond,
is the knowledge beyond the created’s place and status and ability.
And we bear that same temptation today,
Clint, that temptation that says that we can peer beyond the veil,
that we can see what’s on the other side.
I’m not suggesting that we don’t have moments
where we ask those questions,
where that may be,
you know, points of difficulty and faith, absolutely.
And to our tradition’s credit,
we never shied away from asking those questions
and trusting that God has answers.
But as we enter into the conversation today,
I think it’s very helpful to point out that you may be surprised how little the drafters and the divines is what
they’re called the people who are working on this catechism,
as they think to lay out for us a
framework of faith, not the framework of faith,
but their understanding from their vantage of this
is what it means to be in the jet stream of God’s grace and to be part of the Orthodox historic church.
As they looked at it,
they wanted to make it clear by sheer quantity of their time spent,
that we should be more fixated on what Christ is doing in our lives,
as we’re called to be disciples today,
than we should be fixated on what might be or what will be,
because that is a
disproportionate level of interest to put in to the spiritual life.
Yeah, there were,
several years ago, there was a pastor who wrote a book describing heaven.
He claimed to have worked out many of the details in the Bible,
and so questions like,
“Do we have jobs there?
And are there relationships there?
And do we have recreation there?
What do we do?
Are there pets?” And most of these things,
he gave concrete answers.
And one of the things I can
assure you is that you won’t read that book written by a Reformed Presbyterian theologian.
That book would be the shortest book.
We don’t know the end.
We address those matters as matters of hope,
as matters of faith and trust.
And we have been reluctant to say firm things about what
we know of the afterlife,
because the reality is we leave that in God’s very more than capable hands,
and we don’t need to know.
Having said that,
we do move on to this question.
Question 37,
“What are the benefits that believers receive from Christ at death?” So,
this is important,
“from Christ at death.” And the authors of the Catechism do try to give some
concrete answers here.
“The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness,
and do immediately pass into glory,
and their bodies, being still united to Christ,
rest in their graves until the resurrection.” Now,
we have said this.
This document is
underpinned by theology,
and these are theological issues.
For each of these things that are said, there were counterarguments.
So, it is the case that in expressing these,
the authors of the
would have been available to them at the time.
So,
the souls of believers are at their death
made perfect in holiness.
This is a pushback on the idea that people would wait for the effect
of Christ’s work in their souls,
in the soul’s life after death.
And they immediately pass into glory.
Again,
this is a controversy of sorts.
When does the resurrection happen of the Spirit?
We know that the body waits.
Some hold that the Spirit waits.
With the body,
at the time of Westminster,
the men who wrote this went on the side that immediately upon death,
our Spirit passes into glory,
which I think is the very prevalent view through the ages.
I think that’s how most of us think about it.
And their bodies, being united with Christ,
rest in the grave until the resurrection.
So, here we have that idea that there is a separation.
There is a split of body and soul that upon death,
the soul is brought into the kingdom
through Christ, with Christ,
and in Christ,
and the body waits then for the final consummation,
which is the physical resurrection of believers.
But having said that,
Michael, I mean, the authors are here taking a stance.
I think we can read this as just them saying what they believed, which it is,
but in saying that,
they are also saying they disagree with the other options.
Another example of that is the theological idea of purgatory is very much in view here of that
idea that was prevalent for a long, long time,
and still remains in some branches of the church,
but that there’s some intermediary space that humans might need to go through.
The reason that the reformers and the drafters of this catechism are so uncomfortable with that is because it
suggests that the work that Jesus has done might need to be finished,
might not be complete,
that there might be a part of Jesus’s work that is in somehow reliance upon us,
upon our own action,
or time acting upon us.
And the thing that they’re going to say over and over and over again,
Clint, is we are not barriers to God’s action in our lives.
God is going to do as God does.
God is the Creator.
We are the created.
God is the Lord.
God is the King.
We are the ones who serve.
We are the ones who are called.
We are the ones who are invited to the table,
if you’re going to use
Jesus’s metaphor and the bridegroom.
I think it’s important for us to come to a text like this and
realize that this is once again a hopeful word.
It’s not just a restatement of the basics of the
faith, though it is that.
Clint, it is also, if we’re going to be honest and look at it,
it is a promise that at the moment of our death,
there will be nothing to stand in between us and
the saving work of Jesus Christ,
that God holds us upon the very moment of our last breath,
the life that has lived in us through the breath of life will live on in us by the power and the
resurrection life of Jesus Christ,
even though that body may lay in the grave.
There’s a deep hopefulness in a statement like this.
And if you know some of the context,
then you can receive
that gratefully, other than just maybe a restatement of if you’ve been in the Reformed tradition,
a restatement of probably what you’ve been taught and you may believe yourself.
Yeah, and as all of these responses are,
these are faith statements.
These are what the church
believes about death and about how the promise of Christ,
how the work of God through Christ
affects us in death.
It is not to argue that we know these things to be true,
but we believe them to be true and we are comforted by them.
And ultimately, they rest on our knowledge that if we are wrong,
then whatever God does and however it happens is good,
is faithful, is trustworthy, is true, because those things are true of God.
And so, this is a statement of faith about what the Westminster Catechism authors believed about
the death of Christians.
And we see that again in the next question, verse 38.
What are the benefits that believers receive from Christ at the resurrection?
So,
in that final day when all people are resurrected,
“At the resurrection,
believers,
being raised up in glory,
shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment,
and made perfectly blessed in the full
enjoying of God to all eternity.” This is a really well-written, Michael.
“Believers will be raised in glory.
They shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted.” They will be
identified as believers.
They will be judged as innocent in Christ,
as righteous in Christ.
“And they will be made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity.”
So, if you’ve been with us for a while,
the first question of Westminster,
what is the chief end of human people?
To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.
And the final consummation of that happens in the resurrection,
where we praise God,
we are acknowledged as believers,
we are fully blessed,
and we fully enjoy God for all eternity.
So, I appreciate very much that the authors,
Michael, connected our purpose in being human
with our result, with our final status and state in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
I think that is very well done.
There’s a caution, I think, here, Clint, I want to point out,
if we slow down
at the end of question 38 and we look at the full enjoying of God to all eternity,
I might ask the
question for all of us,
what do we believe when we think of enjoying God?
Because there’s a distinct
temptation historically for us to insert into that idea of enjoying whatever our culture tells us is enjoyable, right?
So,
I enjoy golf.
So, is the enjoyment of God golfing with God?
Or, you know, maybe we have adopted something much deeper,
this belief that if I have enough stuff,
or if I work
hard enough, or if I have enough money,
then that I’ll be able to enjoy life.
Because if that is the
assumption we make, Clint, this is my point,
if that’s the assumption we make,
we’re all going to be challenged by what these framers intend.
They don’t mean that the enjoyment of God is the
physical consummation of our deepest cultural desires on earth.
What they mean is being
reunited with the triune,
creative God,
being united to the one,
enjoying in that relational
sense that whatever your best relationship has ever been,
those moments where you’ve realized
the enjoyment of another person,
enjoyment of their company,
enjoyment of their wit,
enjoyment of who they are.
To whatever extent you have experienced that,
you’ve experienced a microcosmic sense of what Christians have meant by enjoying God,
that we somehow might walk with
God like Adam and Eve walked in the garden.
There’s a relational restoration of enjoyment
that is beyond our ability to conceive of.
And when we flatten it,
and we begin thinking of heaven
as a place that’s got a billboard,
like a welcome to heaven sign,
and we start thinking about,
well, what’s my house going to look like?
Not to say that those aren’t interesting conversations,
but they’re not what the historic church has thought.
When we talk about enjoyment of God,
Clint, I mean, this is a mind-blowing invitation to honestly imagine something that is almost
beyond our ability to comprehend. Michael, you use the word restoration,
and I think that’s
the right idea here,
that we are regaining something that humans lost,
that in the resurrection,
that full fellowship, that full communion with God and with one another will be reestablished.
And having never lived in that after the fall,
I think by definition,
that is something we can’t
understand.
So all of our best guesses,
all of the language we use about the future kingdom
will fall short.
It will be more than we imagined,
because if we could imagine it,
it wouldn’t be enough,
because we come from a fallen place,
and we don’t know the full extent
of what we have lost in our sinfulness.
And so whatever it is that we may think is true
about the coming kingdom and our role in it will fall short.
And so I appreciate that the authors
here don’t try to define that.
They don’t try to pin it.
The full enjoying of God
to all eternity.
Well, what does that mean?
Well, we probably don’t know,
but we will in the time that is right,
we will understand, and it will be a gift to us.
And the thing that I’ve always kind of flippantly said about the kingdom is,
whatever it is, no one will be a part of it and say,
“I thought it would be nicer.” It will exceed,
exceed isn’t even the right word.
It will be more than we can possibly imagine.
And in the meantime,
while I think it’s okay to imagine,
I think we want to be cautious not
to get stuck with the idea that what we envision has any real bearing on what it will mean to be
there with God in that reunion and in that rediscovery of who we are and who He is.
There’s, you use the word faith.
I don’t think there’s a better word to describe this,
Clint.
It is deeply biblical.
So there’s references at each one of these points you’ll see in my notes
here that the red numbers.
There’s biblical references that are behind every single one
of these statements, but it’s not just the Bible building a rhetorical case.
It is a statement of
faith, a place we put our hope.
It is a thing that we anticipate with the full awareness that
it all hinges on God’s grace and love.
And though we do not understand it,
it is not for the purpose
of being understood, it’s for the purpose of inspiring within us open hearts to a God who desires that restoration.
And if you hear it that way,
then you’re hearing it in the spirit I think it was intended.
Agree.
And we’ve said a lot about it because we’ve tried to fill in some of the gaps,
but it is interesting that while the authors want to say a clear,
brief word about both our death and our resurrection,
they cover the entire topic in two questions.
I mean,
they don’t linger here
because they take that as an article of faith,
as an acceptance in faith,
and they’re ready to move
on.
Now, the transition, I would argue, is not great.
The next question we get to,
question 39,
is what is the duty which God requires of man?
And so I think we’ve almost gone full stop after question 38,
not quite sure how to build a bridge,
and so we just jump.
What is our duty?
The duty which God requires of us is obedience to His revealed will.
A couple of things here,
Michael, that I think are important.
The word obedience has a checkered history.
It is not a concept
that modern people love.
The idea of pledging obedience,
of being forced to be obedient.
There are lots of examples of misuse and bad results from a kind of obedience,
because obedience generally means authority,
and misused authority to demand obedience is an often repeated refrain
in human life.
But here it is invitation.
What God requires is for us to be in step with His
revealed will, to live according to what we understand that God wants for each of us to be
and to do, to say the way that we live.
And the word revealed here is exceedingly important,
because it’s not simply,
the will of God is not simply some color by numbers checklist
that we can go down and say yes,
yes, yes, no, yes, no.
It is a relational reality.
It is revealed to us as we worship,
as we are sanctified,
as we walk with Christ,
we become able.
We become engaged in the task of looking for,
searching for God’s will,
which He reveals to us.
And as it is revealed,
we are expected, we are encouraged, we are compelled to be obedient,
to follow.
And what I appreciate about this,
Michael, is that there’s an open-endedness to it.
I think there’s a real humility in a group of people writing a catechism
that essentially says the will of God may land differently in different moments of the church.
That’s not to say that God changes what’s right and wrong.
It is to say that the Westminster
Catechism people understood that the will of God is not some fixed thing that could be for all time,
but that it will come new and come fresh in every generation of the church’s life.
And so I very much appreciate that they make a statement like this with a kind of forward-looking
attitude,
a forward-looking approach,
recognizing that at no point will we have it all figured out
in a way that will compel other generations to be like us.
Yeah, it’s important that we read this in the context of the rest of the catechism,
Clint.
I mean, we find revelation in Scripture.
We find that this is a way that God speaks to us.
So, of course, as people of the Reformation,
sola scriptura being a marching order, we take seriously
Scriptures,
the Scripture, what they reveal of who God is.
But ultimately, it’s impossible.
I don’t know how we could read this within the Reformed tradition as we come to this text without seeing
obedience to his revealed will pointing us to Jesus Christ,
that ultimately the revelation of
God comes to us in the one who is God.
That entire time that we spent,
Clint, talking about the two natures of Christ,
born of the Virgin Mary,
very much this deep rootedness in the historic
understanding that Jesus Christ is fully God and fully man,
that is essential to understand
what it means for God’s will to be revealed.
Because God’s will is both against our will,
to the extent to which our sin has marred us and kept us from being able to live into the image
that God has built into every human being,
then God’s will is against our will.
It’s against the brokenness of our will.
But to whatever extent our will has fragments of that reuniting desire to be
connected to the revealed one,
to hear the good news and to respond with the courage of humility,
to confess our sin, to repent,
and then therefore to live into this will that’s enumerated in the
scriptures.
And we’re going to talk about the moral law.
The way that God has built the universe
with its own kind of order,
that the human desire to follow in that order then is a blessing that
has been revealed to us by Jesus Christ.
And we know the cost of that discipleship,
Clint, Jesus says, that the servant’s not greater than the master,
right?
And ultimately Jesus Christ
took upon himself suffering in the cross.
And so we too must recognize that to to live into this
way of being in the world will cost us.
It will be difficult.
It will be pricey in the choices that we make.
And yet it is that very cost that we have a microcosmic amount compared to to the
cost of God giving his own son for our sake.
So I think the language choice here of revealed
is essential because it has more than just the idea of it’s in the Bible.
It’s more than just
the idea that this is a particular idea of the theology of Christ.
This is a huge,
all-encompassing life-transforming kind of call for Christians.
And to your point,
I do think that the church
at our best realizes that we’re always responding to that call in our current time,
in our current place, and we’re seeking to do that faithfully to whatever extent we can.
Pete Yeah, this gets us, the catechism now takes us into,
I think, that interesting ground, Michael, where we,
with the backdrop of Jesus Christ,
we also acknowledge that there are standards,
there are what we would call law codes,
rules is a little bit of a shallow word for I think
what the Bible means by those things,
but that we live under an expectation that there are
behaviors in keeping with this revealed will and there are behaviors that are not in keeping with
the revealed will.
And so, the catechism turns its eye first to what is the best known part of that
for Christians, which is the Ten Commandments.
So,
we see it here as we begin to move there.
Question 40, what did God at first reveal to us for the rule of obedience?
The rule which God
first revealed to mankind for obedience was the moral law.
And I’m going to go ahead and add question 41 here,
where is the moral law summarily comprehended?
The moral law is
summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments.
So, again,
we don’t want to bog down here,
Michael, but the words moral law are tricky in the theological,
historical, biblical
sense of being church.
We’ve had lots of knockdown dragouts in the history of the church over
morality,
what is law, what’s the function of law,
what’s the role of law.
For our version of the Christian faith,
law becomes the way that we—a sign that points us toward what faith in Christ
looks like.
In other words,
the law doesn’t function for us as a hammer hanging over our
head ready to beat us down when we break it.
The law is not a snare willing to catch us and make us
unqualified to be in Christ.
The law is a map that shows us what faithful behavior looks like.
It’s sort of a fence that keeps us on path,
on track to the best of our ability.
And we see that
law in what is considered the summary of the law in the Old Testament,
the Ten Commandments.
Michael, is that fair?
Yeah, I think it’s 100% fair.
I think, Clint, actually,
that just rolls right into question 42.
And what is the sum?
The sum of the Ten Commandments is to love the Lord our God with all of our heart,
our soul, our strength, our mind, and our neighbor as ourselves.
Your point that the law is not a hammer,
the point the law is not a snare,
what we mean here is the law is inherently
open-hearted.
The law is inherently connected.
The point is the law is a thing that at its best,
when functioning as intended,
it moves us deeper in relationship,
not more shallow in relationship.
It makes us authentic,
fully grounded people in the grace of God and in the way of God’s intention for creation.
It does not make us hypocrites.
And that is the danger of reading this in modern times
is, Clint, there’s just substantial suspicion about the Christian understanding and use and
reference of the law.
And I’ve got to confess,
we’ve earned a lot of that.
There’s times when we’ve
held our Bibles,
our floppy Bible, and we flop them at people and said,
“Here are the Ten Commandments.
You are not following them.” And to whatever extent we have found in the moral law being
discussed here a tool or maybe even worse,
a weapon that we’ve used against others,
it reveals a lack of understanding of our tradition.
And it also completely
eschews what I think is a thing that we went to great pains to point out earlier.
We didn’t even need the moral law for these writers to tell us that we were sinful.
I mean, you know this, we talked about human sinfulness before we got to the Ten Commandments.
And the reason for that is simple,
because we’re sinful.
I mean, in our nature, we’re sinful.
So we don’t need the law to be sinful.
The law shows us the ways in which we are.
It sort of shines a light
on it.
But the framers of this,
they don’t think the law is some way instrumental to making the
reality of sin happen in us.
That’s done.
I mean, that goes back to Adam and Eve.
They’ve been clear about that.
What we are to understand is that when we come to the Ten Commandments and find
in them an instrument of love for God and for neighbor,
then we’re living into the spirit for
which that law was given.
And that has to be said at the beginning of this conversation so that we
can begin to understand it rightly.
I would add to that,
Michael, though I agree 100 percent,
they also do not believe that the law is a part of our salvation,
that in keeping the law
is not – keeping the law – not keeping the law didn’t make us sinners,
and keeping the law
doesn’t bring us into the grace and status of Christ’s righteousness.
So we have a kind of
checkered past as Christians with rules.
We at times find them really important.
Sometimes they’re super helpful.
Other times, we point them at others and sort of give ourselves a pass.
And we certainly are always – when we talk about the law,
the commandments, we are always on
ground.
We want to be careful to avoid legalism.
But I think as the catechism moves through this,
I think you’ll see there is very much this expanded idea of in the commandments,
we see an invitation,
a picture of what a righteous life looks like.
And so they are,
for us, a kind of signpost of what it – the effect of following Christ and what it has on us.
So let – yeah,
I’m sorry, Michael, something?
No, go ahead.
So we move then.
We won’t get into the Ten Commandments.
Let’s look at the preface today.
What’s the preface to the Ten Commandments?
Question 43,
preface to the Ten Commandments is
the words – is in these words,
“I am the Lord thy God,
which have brought the out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage.” And let me go to the next question.
What does the preface of
the Ten Commandments teach us?
The preface teaches us that because God is the Lord and our God and Redeemer,
therefore we are bound to keep His commandments.
So the preface, “I’m the Lord who
brought you from the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery.” But I think the – I think
the key here, Michael, is question 44.
Because notice that the preface teaches us that because
God is our Lord and our Redeemer,
therefore we are bound.
The commandments don’t come first,
and I think that matters.
God is not our Redeemer because we keep the commandments.
We keep the commandments because God has redeemed us,
in the same way that God gave the commandments
to Israel after He had led them out of Egypt.
He didn’t say, “When you follow these commandments
well enough, then I’ll help you get out.” He said,
“Because I have delivered you,
this will now be the life that shows the gratitude and response to what I have done,
and here is what it looks like.” And I think in the same way for Christians,
we have to remember
that the work of God comes first,
and our obedience and sort of keeping of the commandments and the
will come second.
I think it’s really helpful,
Clint, that the framers here are going to give us
question 44, and they’re going to answer why question 43 is important.
And I think the
connection between those two questions really deserves pointed out because question 43 is what
is the preface, “I’m the Lord thy God,” which has brought thee out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of bondage,
which connects us to the people of Israel’s story.
And it’s so essential, it’s easy for us thousands of years after the New Testament is written and then get
handed to us by the faithful linkage and chain of the church.
We receive these scriptures and we
bring to them this question about us.
What does this have to say to us?
But it is painfully
clear as we come to read this catechism that we are connected to the whole line of faith,
that the very word given to the people of Israel as they’re given the commandments is the same word
given to us, that God is our Redeemer.
We have been delivered from the oppression.
Now, right, we may not have been taken from Egyptian oppression,
it may not be from that geopolitical place,
but the historic Christian church has always found in that story and its arc the image and the core
story of God’s redemptive plan.
So as we receive the Ten Commandments,
we receive them as part of
those, part of a long legacy to whom it is the intended product.
We’re the intended audience for
the Ten Commandments and we are intended because the Lord is our Redeemer,
because the Lord has
chosen us, because we have been gifted this grace.
And one thing that I think helps us reorient this
Clint is the church has a very understandable history of reading Jesus’s debates with the
Pharisees and all that talk about the law.
And we have a very understandable tradition of seeing
the law as being the thing that is wrong.
But we miss that Jesus is arguing with Pharisees and when
the law comes up,
he’s always correcting their interpretation of the law.
He’s never denying the validity and importance of the law.
And so here,
when we understand the law rightly,
this is question 44 now,
then what we come to see is that God is the Lord and that he’s the Redeemer.
And when we discover and see God in the fullness of who God is,
Clint, that changes everything.
I mean, we not only encounter God’s best for our lives,
but we discover in the midst of it,
the one who has given that best for us.
The thing that gets lost,
I think, at times, Michael, along those lines is that these are words for the community.
These are words for the people.
They overlap some of the moral guideposts,
some of the moral signs that we would use in our culture,
do not murder, for instance.
But these are largely something that Christians should not point at the
world but at ourselves.
These are the gift given within the community of faith.
And so when we
expect others to live up to these as if they’re simply good ideas for society,
we miss, I think, we underestimate the covenantal value of these.
These are the way in which the people of God
are to show gratitude.
Yes,
we try to live out faithfulness in our marriages because
that’s a good idea.
It’s a good practice.
But specifically for believers,
it is the way that
we glorify God by being faithful to the promises we made in God’s name.
Yes,
we shouldn’t take things that don’t belong to us.
That’s good for a society.
That’s an important practice in general.
It’s good to be honest.
All of those things may have a benefit in the broader context, the broader world.
But what they matter most for Christians in regard to is our relationship with
God and our relationship to others through God.
And so I think it’s important,
Michael, and we’ve had lots of battles.
Do the Ten Commandments belong on courthouse yards and painted on walls?
Should we put the Ten Commandments in schools?
I think it’s fine to have those discussions,
but my fear is always what gets lost in these is these are not general wisdom for good living.
These are specifically a call to live in a way that glorifies Jesus Christ and honors God
by what we say and do.
And we should not think of them as less than that.
These are ours.
The Ten Commandments belong to the church and the people of Jesus Christ.
Yes,
they may have some input.
They may have some wisdom for the broader world,
but they belong to us.
And we hold ourselves to the standards before we would have any idea that we would hold others
through them.
I think that’s a really helpful word.
I agree completely, and I think I offer
as maybe a bit of a diagnostic for ourselves as we’re looking this,
I would go all the way back
up to question 42.
And that is when you find yourself referencing the law,
not as if you’re
going around talking with everyone that you see about the Ten Commandments.
I understand that, but when you are talking about the things of God’s plan in our life,
and that comes down to the way
that you talk about our conduct and what God expects,
I think a good question for you to ask yourself is,
is the tone of my approach,
one of finger pointing,
one of weakness,
identifying,
when I talk with others about God’s plan,
am I finding all of the examples of where God’s plan
is not being lived out,
or am I instead connected here to this,
love the Lord your God with all your heart,
which is a relational love.
I mean, in the deepest sense,
the biblical understanding of love
is not just a feeling,
but a choice, a commitment, an orientation in our lives.
And are you committed
to loving your neighbor as yourself?
Is that what drives your spirit as you reflect on law?
And I’m really honestly,
in many ways, just correcting myself here.
I often think of the
law as the pejorative thing that points out failure.
But very clearly, the intention here of the law is gift given to church for the sake of edification,
and for the reminder of who we are,
whose we are,
we belong to the Redeemer,
we belong to the Lord.
And so the laws should therefore
inspire that connection in our hearts as a gift been given to us.
It’s not a tool that we use against others.
And if we find the majority of our imagination captured in that finger-pointing mentality,
then I think it’s good for us to return to something like this and be corrected in that impulse.
I think that’s an outstanding reminder,
Michael, that the purpose of the law,
and as we specifically look over the next couple weeks at the Ten Commandments,
is to move us back to that
relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
It is not about our personal righteousness.
It is certainly not about our self-righteousness.
It is about our attempt to love God with all our heart,
soul,
mind,
and strength, and to love neighbor as self.
It is the path of law that
moves us forward in the path of Christ.
And to whatever extent we feel a disconnect between
those two, we have to understand that the commandments and the laws of the Old Testament
are to move us forward in the faith of Jesus Christ and in our discipleship
of Jesus Christ.
And that is their end,
to sum up the commandments,
love the Lord your God,
heart, soul, mind, and strength,
and love neighbor as self.
There’s no pridefulness here.
There’s no arrogance.
There’s no accusation and judgment.
This is to point us in
the way of Christ.
And to whatever extent it isn’t doing that,
we need to rethink how we’re reading it.
Yeah,
you should always be careful what you read into the text,
but the text does not say
that the sum of the Ten Commandments is the identification and judgment of those who
fail to meet the glory of God.
And the reason it doesn’t say that is because functionally,
reformed families of faith can’t imagine a world in which we could think that we could sit in that seat.
It’s just sheer foolishness,
the idea that in some way we could participate in divining
between God’s way and our own way.
And so, since we’re so lost,
since it’s such a hopeless situation,
the law offers such hopefulness because it’s been given to us by God,
who is not only just a God
seeking to do good,
but a God who’s already done the work of reunification,
of redemption, of
writing what was wrong.
God’s righteousness is imputed to us.
And so therefore,
we can therefore
stand under the law as those who aren’t judging one another,
but rather standing as those who
have been judged in Jesus,
we can live with the life of the law.
And man, just to say that is a
challenge if we understand the fullness of it, Clint.
Yeah, so I don’t know if this helps,
Michael, but I would say that there is a clarifying aspect to the law.
The law can give us a framework by
which we can look at the world and perhaps say,
“Okay, that doesn’t seem God-honoring,
and that seems tempting,
and that doesn’t seem like something we should participate in.” But long before
the law is any kind of lens that lets us look upon the sins of others,
it’s a mirror designed to help us see our own sin and our own struggles.
And I think as long as we
can humbly acknowledge that the first use of the law should point at our own hearts,
long before we think it could help us clarify the life or the actions or the intentions of anyone else,
then I think we’d be on better footing.
You know, I think one critique that could be leveled
at the church, Clint, is that we are easily tempted by theological things and arguments amongst the circle.
And, you know, I think some folks have communicated to me at times feeling
a little lost in the faith,
like what should I be doing?
Because everything that everyone wants
to talk about are,
you know, that this is wrong with society or this is wrong with the church.
And what I think we’re going to discover as we now set our sights to future conversations is
that the Westminster has no time for theoretical faith.
There’s no time for the “what ifs” and
“what should we talk about the coffee shop?” It’s about living.
It’s about doing.
What duty are we called to as those?
Because, by the way, we stand under the duty that God has already done
for us, is the point, is that we are always living in response to God’s work.
So the following 10
commandments are not going to be judgments held over us,
but invitations for stuff that we can
actually do in our faith.
And so I think my invitation to you is,
you know, don’t be put off
by that future conversation,
because I think there’s a great hopefulness, Clint, actually, into,
say, where the rubber meets the road,
what does it mean to be Christian?
And Westminster’s going to have some answers for us.
Yeah, keep in mind this is a personal catechism,
right?
This is a way to learn the faith.
And I don’t think that the divines,
the men who wrote this catechism,
I don’t think they would have any fundamental problem,
Michael, with the idea of the 10
commandments being written on signs or painted on walls.
But I think they would caution that before
it goes up anywhere else,
the first place the law ought to be written is the heart of the believer,
that it ought to be an internal word before it has any bearing as an external word.
And I think that matters.
I think, you know,
in the context of catechism,
I think that’s their
intention.
In the next couple weeks,
the catechism will go down to break,
it will go on to break
down every one of the 10 commandments,
and we will look at them case by case.
I think there will be
some surprising things in here.
The temptation would be to say far more than I think they did.
They’re remarkable in their brevity at times.
And I hope it will be something helpful as we work
through the idea of this gift that we’ve been given, the 10 commandments.
Absolutely.
Friends, we value the time you spend with us.
We’re grateful that you would join us
for these conversations.
And if you’ve made it all the way to the end,
we hope that you might leave
a comment.
Let us know that you were with us.
It’s always a pleasure to get to spend this time
together with you, and we look forward to continuing on this journey with,
I think, some really interesting things to come.
Thanks.