Grace OPC Sewickley PA

Sermon Series: Considering the Church

  • Christ’s Finality and the Church’s Peace

    Christ’s Finality and the Church’s Peace

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 18, 1994.

    About this sermon

    The series closes with a full Biblical-Theological pass through 1 Timothy 2:1-15, returning to why the pastoral epistles matter as much as they’ve argued all along. Christ’s own finality is what actually fulfills the Old Testament’s inadequacies rather than supplying a new set of rules for the New Testament church. What remains, in the end, is peace between men and women inside that one church.

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    Sermon transcript

    We are reading again this morning 1 Timothy chapter 2. Give your full attention now to the reading of God’s holy words. First of all, then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time. And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth, I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works as befits women making a claim to godliness. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve, and it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression. But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

    Let’s pray together now. We know, O God, that your word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld its glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And yes, O Father, we realize that this Incarnate Word is complemented by the Inscripturated Word, and the two agree. For surely the Inscripturated Word is but the Word of the Christ, the Son of God. We ask, therefore, that as we would bow before our Savior and give our attention to Him, that we would give our full attention to Your Word. Father, help us with respect to its meaning, that we would obey it in all of its commands, taking encouragement then in all of its promises. This we ask through Christ, the Living Word. Amen.

    We come this morning to the final message on the latter verses of 1 Timothy chapter 2. It has been my hope, with these messages, to move us beyond shrill rhetoric and move us beyond the sociological and political prejudices that have overshadowed the interpretation of these verses in the last century.

    I have been contending for what is called a biblical theological approach. A biblical theological approach is an approach, the intention of which is to see these verses in their place within the flow of the Bible’s presentation of Revelation history. My intention, therefore, has been to approach these verses in terms of the bond that they signal for us doctrinally, a bond which is communicated to us in terms of the sovereignly directed history of God’s revelation. Normative for us, because we, by God’s grace, find our life not outside of the Bible, but in it. Now, further, these verses come to us from a body of New Testament material that is of much more importance than we might ordinarily think, because of the position that this material holds in the Bible’s history of God’s self-revelation.

    These verses are found in literature that occupies a special place because that literature marks what J. Gresham Machen called the beginning of the second stage in the life of the Church. Put another way, 1 Timothy is part of that literature that uniquely addresses the Church as the Church moves from the apostolic period to the post-apostolic period. Paul’s pastoral letters, then, 1 and 2 Timothy, and also Titus. Paul’s pastoral letters were written at the end of his life, as he was facing death. as the time of the apostles itself was ending, and the time in which there would be no living apostle in the Church was beginning. You begin to perceive the added relevance and increased importance of this material for you. You see, you live in precisely that time frame, the time frame for the Church in which there is no living apostle among us.

    If, then, all Scripture is inspired by God, all Scripture is God-breathed, and is powerfully applicable and relevant to us, there is a sense in which the pastoral epistles are particularly relevant, and their authority is underscored again and again, bringing it down to cases What Paul says then in the latter verses of 1st Timothy 2, specifically in verses 8 through 15 about men and about women, is even more binding and normative than we might have thought at first glance. The context for these statements from Paul According to God’s point of view, according to the Bible’s history of revelation point of view, according to a mature biblical theological point of view, the context for these statements from Paul is not the second half of the first century. That context being hemmed in by cultural concerns relative to cities on the western coast of Asia Minor. No. Instead, the context for these statements, from God’s point of view, from the Bible’s history of revelation point of view, from that mature biblical theological point of view, the context for these statements is the time from the end of the Apostles’ ministry to the end of the world.

    The situation has not changed. God has done nothing further. Paul’s words here, then, are not bound to the situation in the early sixties of the first century. His words are not bound by the cultural particulars of the city of Ephesus where Timothy presently labored.

    Paul’s words rather express the Spirit’s will. Now, even further, they express the will of the ascended, living, reigning, heavenly Christ, and his concern for right decorum in God’s house until the confirmation. Even if we were to grant a cultural relativity to other texts from Paul’s writings. Even if we were to grant a cultural relativity to his comments, say, about head coverings in 1 Corinthians 11, a text from a letter written as many as ten years earlier in the Apostles’ ministry. We are not given the same latitude here in 1 Timothy.

    Paul’s words here propel us into a post-apostolic situation, the very situation in which we live in the history of revelation and redemption. These words, therefore, speak with a conclusiveness. a finality that we ignore or deny to our detriment and to the unsettling of the Church of Jesus Christ. But while we need to do a much better job of assessing the importance of the pastoral letters and their unique place in the history of We also need to do a much better job of evaluating the way in which Paul, in these letters and this morning in 1 Timothy 2, draws upon the entirety of the history of Revelation for the purposes of making his point. The history of Revelation is concerned with the unitary, singular outworking of the purpose of God. There is but one plan for God’s glory and the glorification of his people, the Church. This plan is progressively unfolded through various epochs of Revelation history, with each epoch building upon that which went before and building toward the full realization of God’s glorious goal. that we should be aware, in light of our own confession, in light of our own commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ, that the epochs of Old Testament revelation history end, as it were, at an impenetrable wall, as if God, by design, has brought his program to a certain point beyond which it cannot go, except he act afresh.

    Therefore, as wonderful as the Old Testament is, and Paul in his letters repeatedly calls attention to how wonderful and glorious the Old Testament is, check out 2 Corinthians 3. But as wonderful as that Old Testament is, it has left the people of God nose-up against that impenetrable wall, and face-to-face with two blurring problems that, from their point of view, from their side of things, are utterly unresolvable. The first problem is this, Israel and its institutions to bring about a permanent, stable, or eternal circumstance, situation, or environment for the people of God.

    Even the Jews of Paul’s day were on their third temple. That doesn’t communicate permanence. They were on their third temple. And there were no guarantees that these people could not and would not lose the land bequeathed to them by their forefathers. They had already lost it once in their history, and as things were making progress through the fifties towards 70 A.D., it looked very likely that they were going to lose it again.

    So you see, as the Old Testament bears witness, it brings the people of God up against this impenetrable wall and this irresolvable problem. That Old Testament revelation has not been able to provide the people of God with permanent stability and endurance. But second, Israel and its institutions have not brought about any resolution, any true resolution, to the problem of sin. As the writer to the Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats cannot really take care of the afflicted conscience. The catastrophic fall of humanity into the ruination of sin, together with its sentence of death, were highlighted and deepened by the Old Testament Jewish administration, but not finally resolved.

    When Paul writes 1 Timothy 2, verses 8-15, he has in mind, yes, the particulars of the circumstances in which he writes. He has in mind the peculiarities of the post-apostolic era which is now dawning, which is coming into view, even as he faces his own departure, and the fact that all the apostles are going to depart before the coming of the Lord.

    But the apostle also has in mind And this, supremely, the marvels of Jesus Christ the Lord. As Jesus, by his ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension, has brought the grand and final solution to the growing inadequacies, weaknesses, and insoluble problems of the Old Testament administration. You will note the way in which the Apostle brings this out throughout the body of this chapter.

    Verses 1-7, it may not be obvious to us, but beneath the surface of these words there stands an Old Testament prophecy. And Paul is reflecting upon that prophecy, namely Isaiah 56, verses 6-8. And God promised there that he would make his house a house of prayer for all peoples. You may recall that in the narratives concerning Christ’s cleansing of the temple, he quotes that Old Testament text as indication that the day of fulfillment has come.

    But now note Paul’s universal tones as he moves through those opening verses of 1 Timothy 2. These universal tones, as Paul speaks about all nations and all peoples, rise from the reality that God in Jesus Christ has in fact brought about a new day, the promised day, a day impossible to be realized by Israel left to her own strength. That day has come by the workings of God, in which God is available and accessible not only to one nation or one race, but to all nations and all races. The Apostle has the breadth of the history of revelation in mind as he writes to these Moving on in 1 Timothy 2, verse 8, then, a verse which we’ve noted speaks directly to the men of the congregation. Paul continues to see current opportunity and obligation for them in light of the redemptive historical history of revelation accomplishment which God has brought about in Jesus Christ. But this time he moves on from Isaiah.

    To the left of the Old Testament books, beneath the surface of Paul’s statement here in 1 Timothy 2.8, is a quotation from Malachi 1.11. Here, then, is envisioned that circumstance in which the prayers of God’s people are not offered merely in one place, but in every place. as the provisional and imperfect system of the Old Testament is transcended and even abrogated by the full and complete administration that is realized in Jesus Christ. Coming to expression in this superlative administration is then a new man, not just a new environment, not just a new situation. but a new man who, in Christ Jesus, approaches God with holy hands and with a soul cleansed from anger and dissension. A new man, recreated in Christ Jesus, who in his prayers looks like and acts like Jesus himself.

    1 Timothy 2.8 then, in concert with what has gone before in the preceding verses, sets before us the New Testament resolution to that twofold Old Testament problem. In it we are carried beyond the temporary character of things that belong to the Old Testament and into a final administration of things, and that by God. It is this administration of which you are a part. But as verse 8 makes clear, we are also brought to the triumph of the new man in Christ, standing over against the old man in contrast to Adam and his lineage, and this because of Christ.

    Men now able to swear by their lives, holding up holy hands. and that to the content of their prayers, reinforcing that content with lives that are free of envy, free of anger, and free of bitter rivalry. In other words, free of those things that destroy, because of our relationship to our first parents and even our union with our Father, Adam. Truly, in Jesus Christ, things that could not be dealt with or resolved in the old administration have now been conclusively dealt with. Paul moves on, verses 9-15. Here he turns specifically to the Venom, but he’s following the same line. To be sure, throughout this chapter, as we’ve tried to emphasize in our messages on it, Paul is interested in the question of leadership.

    The men who would lead among God’s people must rise from and be commended by their grasp of the redemptive historical nature of the Word of God and their own redemptive historical situation because of Christ, but further, by virtue of their common call as new men in Christ to a life of prayer. Therefore, if a man cannot pray, he must not lead. Putting it even more directly, if a man won’t pray, he must not lead. If a man cannot submit to God in prayer, he cannot rule.

    But even though the women, this in keeping with the testimony of the Apostle now, are But even though the women are not called to lead among God’s people in the same way as the men are, they too must rise from and be commended by their grasp of their redemptive historical situation in Jesus Christ, as well as by their common call as new women in Christ to a life that is marked by good works. a preoccupation with God, not self.

    That’s the force of his comment there, as he speaks about women’s dress. Women who are, first of all, concerned for God, not for themselves. women who are first of all concerned in their good works for others, not absorbed by themselves. Here then is a common call for the new woman in Christ to a life of good works, not self-interest or self-absorption.

    First, Paul speaks about the women, then, against the background of texts that rise from the Old Testament. Psalm 45, for instance, a text that speaks about the outward glory of the Queen, fitted out for the King in all of her beautiful raiment. But it is the outward glory there, you see, that is the pointed issue, as Paul builds off of considerations like that text out of Psalm 45. Paul’s point is that now, in the New Testament administration, we have moved beyond the old.

    The old administration that exposes its provisional and inferior character by its concentration upon appearances and upon the visible, and external beauty. True beauty, however, is not found in the obvious, it is not found in the flesh, it is not found in the earthly. True beauty is found in that which is of value in heaven. It is found in good works that commend God, not the individual.

    With such, the new woman in Christ is to adorn herself as if she herself were the new temple. She is the beautified bride of Christ. She is right unto his church in glory. Here, then, we are carried beyond the inadequacies and the impossibilities of the Old Testament into the glories of the New. But further, Carl’s point concerns not just resolution of Old Testament weakness and inferiority and incompleteness, it also addresses the root problem of evil. the problem of the fall, and woman’s involvement in it. The new woman in Christ now asserts herself, clearly. The new woman in Christ now asserts herself in full recognition of God’s creational and recreational activity.

    This means, according to the Apostle, giving up the word of God for our lives until the confirmation that no new woman in Christ rebels against Christ’s authority communicated through the Apostle by usurping the man’s rightful responsibility in the Church.

    There may be many, many confused women presently. I am patient with those women in their confusion as they try to work out resolutions for the problems which they feel are so pressing. But while I have patience for the confused woman of our time, I have no patience for the rebel, whose rebellion is blasphemy. I am putting this in absolute terms.

    No new woman in Christ rebels against Christ’s authority, speaking finally through the apostle, by usurping the man’s rightful responsibility in Christ’s Church. Paul doesn’t end there, though, does he? We’re only up to verse 12. it gets more difficult as you go on.

    No new woman in Christ rejects the creational ordering of things and the meaning of that creational ordering. For it was Adam who was first created and then healed. No new woman in Christ denies that. But every new woman in Jesus Christ must go on and deal with the meaning of that statement. That’s verse 13. No new woman in Christ disputes female culpability.

    Now, do you think this is not a problem? I remember what I was taught as a child. Little boys are made out of snakes and snails and puppy dog tails. In other words, boys are inherently evil. Little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. Girls are inherently innocent. Now that’s communication at a child’s level, but you see what would happen if that’s elevated to religious dogma.

    And that is precisely what Paul is battling at Ephesus. No new woman in Christ disputes female culpability, female sinfulness. No new woman in Christ disputes the woman’s culpability in the fall, or pleas for female innocence, or even female superiority. It was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression. Now please, don’t misunderstand the apostle at this point. He is not making the statement in the interest of male innocence. That’s verse 14.

    Finally, no new woman in Christ contemptuously dismisses her own physiology. Some women spend their lives angry because they were born women. No new woman in Christ contemptuously dismisses her own physiology, her own physical makeup, but rather rejoices in the fact that though sin entered the old world through Eve’s Salvation has been promoted through her submission, a submission that comes to expression in her and in her true daughters in the bearing of children.

    That is one instance in which it comes to expression. Indeed, such submission is actually blessed, is it not? Even as it is epitomized in marriage. by whom the Savior came into the world. By all means, then, let us grasp hold of the redemptive, historical, biblical, theological depth of this text, but also let us, each of us, come face to face with the submission prescribed in it for us.

    For submission in Christ is not for the sake of women alone, for men, as we have already indicated, must submit themselves, as verse 8 makes clear. Nevertheless, submission in the woman, even in the new order in Christ, expresses itself in different ways than in the man.

    But the submission of both builds to the tranquil and quiet life You remember that mentioned in verse two, builds to the tranquil and quiet life that reflects to the glory of God, the eternal realm of peace. Let us have peace in the church of Christ. There should be no war of the sexes. in the assembly of God.

    Our Father, how good you are, and Father, we would see your goodness even in the unfolding of your great plan and purpose. And Lord, as we are brought up to the brick wall through which the Old Testament leads us, the wall through which no man can beat us, we rejoice that you have come to do just that. But Father, now on the other side of that wall, we realize that we are not free from constraint or even from your command. nor are we free from the restraints of the creational order and even the re-creational order. Do bless us, our God, that in us, male and female, there may be found that submissive spirit and that we would do what is right. We pray this, O God, that there may be peace in your house. For Jesus’ sake,

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Paul Glorifies Women

    Paul Glorifies Women

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 11, 1994.

    About this sermon

    1 Timothy 2:9-15, read carefully, is less a set of restrictions than Paul actually glorifying women and the church alongside them, pointing to a hidden beauty rather than an external one. Liberty in dress is real, but liberty is not license. Ruth 2 supplies an Old Testament picture of the same peace Paul is encouraging here.

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    Sermon transcript

    We are continuing to look at 1 Timothy 2. We begin our reading at verse 1. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy word. First of all, then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

    It is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. There is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time. For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth, I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works as befits women making a claim to godliness. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was created first, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression. But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.”

    Let’s pray together. Father, we know that there are many difficult things in your Word. And we ask, Father, that you may help us with the difficult things. We may even take some things quite personally. And we are asking, Father, that we might be sensitive to your Spirit. We ask, O Lord, therefore, that you will direct us in a proper path, and that our conscience may be informed thoroughly and rightly by your word. Lord, above all else, we ask that we might not be rebellious. Instead, O Father, may there be found in us your Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Spirit of humility. This we pray in Christ’s name, Amen.

    We are considering the latter verses of 1 Timothy 2. Here Paul presses his point. in addressing the women in the Church at Ephesus, where Timothy is presently serving. His specific point, then, is related not just to women generally, but specifically to women as they would assume positions as teachers and leaders in the Church. Paul speaks very forthrightly, very directly. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain silent. But we should realize by now, having given our attention to these matters in 1 Timothy for some time now, we should realize that this statement by Paul is of apiece with his concerns all along, even from the beginning of this epistle. Paul, therefore, by this statement, is not—how shall I say it?—picking on women. Paul, by this statement, is not picking on women. Rather, he is continuing to address the subject that has been at the forefront of this epistle from the outset, namely the question of leadership, and most specifically, the issue of who shall teach.

    You will notice, however, as we move into the latter verses now of 1 Timothy 2, and this controversial text. You will notice how Paul builds up to that twelfth verse. You will notice his emphasis in verses 9 through 11. In those verses, 9 through 11, he has spoken about a general definition of the Christian woman’s life and character. That general definition, you will note, carries a glory and a rationale that set up Paul’s remarks about women in teaching and leading roles in the Church. Now, it may be that as you look at the text on your own, you’re not able to pull out the glory or the rationale in verses 9-11 as you push on to verse 12. It is my intention this morning to help you in that regard. There is a glory to what Paul is saying in verses 9-11.

    I realize that the extremities of our situation presently in the Church do not help us to see that glory. In fact, in reading these verses, people are liable to react rather than to respond appropriately to what the Apostle is saying here. This is a text that has generated a tremendous amount of heat in our times. Let me say that what Paul had to say in this text in the Ephesian church also generated a great amount of heat. But I make these comments to you at this point because I want you to press beyond the surface of things.

    I want you to trust this servant of Christ who is inspired of the Holy Spirit. Truly you must believe that he has the good of the women at Ephesus at heart as he speaks. And even as he takes up this matter of women leading and teaching in the Ephesian church, he has not lost sight of the glory that surrounds his comments and permeates those comments. As you may suspect from the way in which I’m introducing things here, that glory is subtly communicated. I will not deny that. It is subtly communicated, but it is there nonetheless for those who are sensitive to the Apostle’s interest and to his doctrines. Now that glory is communicated at least at three points.

    First of all, you must not lose sight of the glory that is apparent to the Apostle, even as he takes up this matter, the glory that is apparent to the Apostle because of what has transpired in the great transitional work which God has accomplished through Jesus Christ, his Son. Now, I say this to you because I know that the tendency is to lose sight of it as you wander into cause argumentation, not just here but in other places. And because we lose sight of this specific point and the glory attached to it, we can so easily become caught up in sociological questions, or derailed through an interest in morality and nothing more. You must catch hold of the interest and the concern of biblical religion. which is something that not only Paul presses home, but all biblical authors press home.

    And that concern is that God’s redemptive work, His saving activity, His great and mighty deeds, precede any demand that He makes upon His people. You must understand that. The redemptive accomplishment of God, His mighty act, precedes any demand that He lays upon you, and this means, then, that your performance of any command issued by God depends, first of all, upon what He has done. Before you can do anything, God must act. fully gracious from beginning to end. Before I can comply, God must work. And so marvelous is that work, that He even draws me into it, and I am enabled by His mercy to participate in what He has done.

    Now, one of the reasons why I am so animated about this subject this morning is that I have been reading World Magazine. Now, it seems that World Magazine takes ads from anybody. But there is an ad that’s been appearing recently in World Magazine that is so utterly contrary to the essential spirit of biblical religion, and so contrary to what the Apostle Paul is all about, even as he speaks, as he does here in 1 Timothy 2. It seems that some enterprising artist has decided to call his calligraphy the Ten Commandments, so that even though the Ten Commandments have been barred from public schools, you can have your own copy and hang it on your own wall.

    The marvelous thing about this rendition of the Ten Commandments is, it begins, I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Did you catch it? Something’s been left out. Do you remember how it goes? I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me. which thou brought the art of the land of Egypt out of the house of bondage. Therefore thou shalt have no other job.” The redemptive nature of biblical religion has been ripped right out of that rendition of the Ten Commandments. What’s left? Their morality. It’s wonderful for civil religion, but it has nothing to do with biblical religion.

    You must not, therefore, lose sight of the redemptive key, the great act of God, even as you take up this subject of women teaching and leading in the latter verses of 1 Timothy 2. Now, it’s obvious, is it not, that the glory caught hold of here by Paul is something hidden, or it’s not as apparent as we might think it ought to be. We are dealing here, then, as we move into this world that has been established by the great and mighty work of God in Jesus Christ, we are moving into a world in which hidden things truly mean a lot, in which those things that the world doesn’t think much of at all mean a great deal.

    Later in this letter, Paul, in the third chapter, the fifteenth verse, speaks to these Ephesian Christians about who they are, and he gives them a description that must have caught them off guard. He calls them, in the fifteenth verse of that third chapter, the house of God, the church of the living God, proof, pillar, and throne. Do you think that any of that was apparent to them as they were going to worship week in and week out? They may be gathering together in some huddle down the street. Not much outward glory at all.

    But most, how Paul confers upon them a glory that surpasses their wildest imagination, for all of the terms that he uses here in verse 15 of that third chapter are actually lifted out of the Old Testament and speak of those entities or institutions or factors in Israel’s life in which God had the deepest and most intimate contact with his people.

    So Paul is saying, even though you may not see it, even though the world certainly doesn’t see it, you are the house of God. You are the temple of the Lord. You are the assembly of the living God. You are truth’s pillar, pillar cloud, and throne, even ark of the covenant. You don’t need an ark. You are the arch. We don’t need a pillar of cloud and fire. You are that pillar. We do not need a temple made of stone. You are that temple.

    This means that these saints, regardless of their humble dwelling place, their simple circumstances, their unadorned assemblage, Paul, despite their lack of outward glory, these saints are clothed with a glory that has been granted them through God’s great work of redemption in and through Jesus Christ.

    But it’s the same with the women at the end of chapter 2, for they have been made participants in such glory as that. A beauty is theirs, not as the world appreciates, not so as to appeal to the eye, but a beauty that comes from a completely different order of things, an order that is brought into view in and through Christ and his heavenly administration. Not that this beauty doesn’t have an external expression, for as Paul says in those verses, it shows itself in good works. in the doing of good. And with such apparel, the women of the Church are to be adorned. Thus, a woman’s humility, her simplicity, her concentration upon an inward beauty of the soul, her concentration upon heavenly matters, translates into a superlative beauty. which the Lord himself appreciates.

    Now the second point at which we see this subtle glory communicating in verses 9 through 11 is actually at the level of ethics. and has everything to do with the liberty and the freedom of the saints of the Lord. Paul, here, in verses 9-11, does speak of the matter of women’s apparel, but you note that he does not legislate for the woman what makes up for modest and discreet dress.

    Even though many claiming to be friends of Paul have gone to great lengths to make just such prescriptions. But you see, Paul, Paul is not a legalist. Paul is the champion of the gospel of liberty and freedom in Jesus Christ. So instead of making the decisions for the women as to what they might wear, Paul leaves the matter to them. Paul leaves the matter to them.

    He makes his point in such a way that he throws the issue of proper dress in the first place back upon the woman herself. By doing this, he is working for her maturity in the faith, but also, by approaching the matter in this way, he is refusing to rob this woman of her freedom and her liberty.

    In that liberty, she must decide. Now, at the same time, it is clear that she now is being considered fully a moral agent. If there was a question about that in previous times, if she stood under the shadow of her husband in some respect, even in the old economy of Israel, Now she is looked upon and considered fully as a moral agent, accountable in her own right, in her own name, to the Lord and to the Church of which she is a part. Such accountability means that she is not autonomous, and she, as she gains maturity, understands this full well. and has no difficulty admitting it. Therefore, she does not react belligerently or arrogantly when someone in a loving Christian spirit approaches her, be it a leader in the church or her husband or her father, to speak about her need for modesty. in her dress. Yes, as always, liberty, but not license. Now the third point at which this glory is subtly communicated to us in verses 9 through is found in the 11th verse. Little women quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness.

    Now again, I raise the specter of sociological discussion. which so colors our approach to a text like this in our time that we tend to react rather than to respond, and in our response find the depths that are here for our good. You see, Paul’s words here, as strong as they may sound to us, given our sociological context, Paul’s words here are not meant to communicate oppressiveness. Paul’s words here are not meant to further the interests of males, as males keep women in their place. There is no such thought in Paul’s mind. Rather, the operative words in this verse are those that convey peace. The operative words in this verse are those that convey peace. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with whole, complete, restful submissiveness.

    In view, specifically then, is the place that the women do play in the people of God. The silence, the quiet spoken of here, that characterizes the women, is an extension in her and to her and by her of the tranquil and quiet life that is to characterize the whole of God’s people. If you go back up to verse 2, you will see where Paul speaks first of all about that tranquil and quiet life. He wants prayers to be made for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we, all of us, not just the women, but all of us, may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. Paul now is picking up on that second verse in verse 11 as he speaks about the quiet and tranquil qualities that are to characterize the life of these women. The total submissiveness in view in this eleventh verse matches not only the godliness and dignity of that second verse, but it contrasts the wrath and the dissension against which the men are worn in verse 8. Just as the men were warned about wrath and dissension, thus demonstrating that they weren’t submitting in manners pertaining to prayer, now the women are spoken of directly by the Apostle in this regard, that they might promote with the men the quiet and tranquil life of the people of God.

    Now, you must understand that this picture is both environmental and psychological. The environment is a tranquil setting. That’s the nature of the Church, as Paul sees it. He labors for peace in the Church. He labors for the quiet life. The environment that he has in view, then, is a tranquil setting in which women are secure and unharassed. That’s what he’s working for. No woman walking into the church of Jesus Christ should feel threatened because of her death. Sadly, tragically, churches have become arenas in which men prey upon women. Paul’s interest here, what lies beneath the surface of the glory that he is endeavoring to communicate, has this environmental aspect to it. He has in view a realm, a domain. a tranquil setting in which women are secure and unharassed.

    There is a beautiful picture of this in the Old Testament. I have in mind the book of Ruth, chapter 2. As Ruth, the humble, godly Moabite widow, converted to the God of Israel, finds wonderful security in the fields of Boaz. Boaz says to his workers, no one is to touch her. She is to know that she is perfectly safe to come in and glean from the field. But I said to you, Paul’s concern here is also psychological. Pick up on the words, bring them dry. Quiet. Perfect, total, restful submission. Women, does that not speak to you? Quiet. Perfect.

    There is the picture in the Bible of just the opposite, you know. I have in mind the end of Luke 10, and some of you are ahead of me. There we see serene Mary sitting submissively in perfect and total restfulness at her Savior’s seat, receiving His instruction. But over against her is Martha, who is consumed by fretfulness, worry, and anxiety.

    Dear women of Jesus Christ, read 1st Timothy 2 verses 9-11 again. and draw from them these verses the glory that is laid therein. Don’t read them as belittling and demeaning and condescending words from a male supremacist. Read them as thoughtful, loving, gracious words from the Lord’s ambassador. And understand just how glorious you are as you are set secure in the Lord Jesus’ realm of peace, even now as you have been made by his transforming work to become an agent of peace and tranquility for him in the Church.

    Let’s pray. Our Father, as we prayed before we pray again, help us with the hard texts and the difficult sayings. and deal with our souls, O God, that we might be found mature in the faith and responsive to your Spirit who speaks in your servants, even this servant, the Apostle Paul.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Sin Knows No Gender

    Sin Knows No Gender

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 4, 1994.

    About this sermon

    1 Timothy 2:9 pairs with 2:8, so submission shows in how men pray and in how women dress, two sides of one call to humility. Sin knows no gender, and neither instruction singles out one sex as more guilty. Christ’s beauty surpasses any Old Testament regalia a woman might put in its place.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning our scripture reading begins in Psalm 45, and I am reading here from verse 9. We should give our undivided attention to the reading of God’s holy word. Psalm 45, verse 9. “‘King’s daughters were among thy honorable women. Upon thy right hand did stand the Queen in gold of Ophir.

    Hearken, O daughter, and consider and incline thine ear. Forgive us, O thine own people, and thy father’s So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty, for he is thy lord, and worship thou him. And the daughter of Tyre shall be there with a gift. Even the rich among the people shall entreat thy favor. The king’s daughter is all glorious within. Her clothing is of rock gold. She shall be brought unto the king in raiment of needlework The virgins, her companions, that follow her, shall be brought unto thee. With gladness and rejoicing shall they be brought. They shall enter into the king’s palace.

    Instead of thy father shall be thy children, whom thou mayest make princes in all the earth. I will make thy name to be remembered in all generations. Therefore shall the people praise thee forever and ever.” I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.

    And like manner also that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety, not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array, but which becometh women professing godliness with good works. Yet the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. but to be in silence, for Adam was first formed, then used, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. Notwithstanding, she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.”

    We have come this morning to a detailed exposition of 1 Timothy 2, verses 9-15, in our extensive series of messages entitled, a series that has brought us to the more finely tuned topic of 1 Timothy, namely, Who Shall Teach? Now, please understand, it is not my purpose this morning to rehash old messages. It is not my purpose to go over my critique of the modern feminist movement as it has had increasing profound impact upon the Church of our time, nor is my purpose this morning specifically to deal with the narrow question of women’s ordination into the standing offices of the Church. I have dealt with those matters before in sermons earlier this year. In fact, I preached two sermons on those subjects on April 24th, and if you are interested, In hearing what I had to say on those matters, I encourage you to speak to Danny Olinger, and he will be happy to supply you with tape that contains those messages.

    But this morning, as I said, we are beginning a detailed exposition of 1 Timothy 2, the latter verses that pertain specifically to women in the Church. I trust to get beyond much of the cultural clutter that is abroad today, and hopefully all of the supercharged, inflammatory rhetoric that has hindered responsible treatment of these verses.

    To begin with, we must account for Paul’s opening word in that ninth verse. We must account For the opening word in that ninth verse, it is a conjunction. The King James Version renders that conjunction in the rather elaborate and extensive clause, in like manner also. In like manner also.

    The New American Standard has compressed things a bit with its translation. and offers up but one word, likewise, likewise, I want women to adorn themselves, etc. But the New International Version, if you have that in front of you, is totally inadequate in its translation. It offers up its rendering with the simple word, also.

    I also want women thereby completely missing the force of Paul’s meaning. The NIV translation leaves us with the idea that Paul intends nothing more here than a mere sequence, a mere listing of items, a listing of considerations, first this, then that. Now, obviously, verse 8, where Paul spoke directly to the men of the Church, is linked with verse 9, where he is speaking directly to the women. But the NIV translation supplies us simply with the sense that Paul, having said something to the men, now has something to say to the women. You will note, however, As both the King James and the New American Standard bring out, Paul’s meaning here is not mere sequence, first this, then that, first the men and then also the women. Rather, Paul’s meaning is comparison, not sequence but comparison, as with the men, so also or likewise with the women.

    Now, this conjunction used here is used elsewhere in scripture. I bring it up by way of illustration. This word is used in Luke chapter 22, verse 20. It is used also in 1 Corinthians 11, 25. Both texts deal with the Lord’s Supper. And the conjunction used in both of these texts draws attention to the similar way the similar manner in which Jesus presented the bread and then the wine to his disciples. You remember how it goes? In the same way, in what manner Jesus took the cup after they had eaten, thus calling attention to the humility and the thankfulness, yes, the disposition of Christ with which he offered both the bread and the wine.

    At issue then is comparison, similarity, not merely sequence. Paul’s interest here in 1 Timothy 2 verse 9 is not this and then that, rather it is this is like that. As it was with the men, so also with the women. Now, in our consideration of 1 Timothy 2, 9 and following, this point is of great importance.

    In fact, more importance than you might imagine, especially because of the more modern interpretations of these verses, be they from a traditional point of view or from a more radical point of view. For you see, these modern interpretations tend to approach this text in terms of contrast. not comparison. Instead of picking up on Paul’s point and emphasis through the conjunction, and seeing here a comparison as you move from 8 to 9, these modern approaches are concerned to say something about male and female uniqueness, as if that was all that was in the text. And I might say, pressing the matter to extremes, these interpretations have tended, in too many cases, to approach the text in terms of male or female empowerment, thus emphasizing the differences between the sexes. The issue, then, we are told, is either retaining power or gaining power. But it is that these modern interpretations tend to concentrate upon contrasts, the dissimilarities between the sexes. Now, not that the text doesn’t go on to speak specifically about dissimilarities. It does. Not that the text doesn’t have, undergirding it, the assumptions with regard to the dissimilarities between the sexes.

    However, as Paul begins his comments here, very interestingly, his concern is something which men and women share, or in which they are engaged with regard to common activity, or attitude, or disposition. What, then, is the line of similarity? What is the precise nature of the comparison being drawn upon here by Paul as he speaks to men and women in verses 8 and 9 of 1 Timothy 2? Well, you may want to remember what we have already said concerning Paul’s interest in verse 8, where he speaks to the men.

    Now listen to me. Try to get this right. Paul’s concern in verse 8 is not to carve out a special, exclusive province for men, as if prayer was a unique concern and obligation of males. Now, I’ve said that to you before, I say it to you again. That is not Paul’s interest here. He is not concerned to carve out a special, unique province for men which is exclusively their concern and interest, namely prayer. No, Paul’s concern is that men might pray out of hearts that know the humble obligation of prayer. Will you please underline humble?

    In view is submission. Why, it’s a discovery. I’m talking about men here. In view is submission. Paul’s interest is that men might pray out of hearts that know the humble, yes, submissive obligation for prayer and to prayer, and that men might pursue that righteous duty without anger and dissension. But you see what this does. Paul reaches right into the 1990s with this comment.

    Because you see, by submitting in prayer in this way, by being submissive, by demonstrating such humility, men explode, no, they literally destroy their own stereotypical self-images. Men don’t need to pray, in fact. As I said before, real men don’t pray. Why? Because they’re self-sufficient. Everybody knows that.

    It is out of this base, this common activity of prayer then, which Paul sets before the Ephesian males. that provides a base and even a reservoir out of which good leadership may rise for the Church.” But Paul goes on, “…in like manner also the women, likewise the women.” In other words, Paul is now going to look to the women in the Church along similar lines as he looks to the men in this age. And he brings up, of all things, women’s apparel, women’s But note now, he is bringing up this matter of apparel for the same reason that he brought up prayer to men in verse 8.

    This is going to get very difficult, isn’t it? The argument is along the same line. Surely it’s not, you see, that men are thereby permitted to dress immodestly and indiscreetly. That is not the implication of the text, as if you see apparel for the exclusive province of females alone. That’s not the issue.

    It will be through apparel, through dress, that Paul communicates to these women specifically on the matter of their attitudes and dispositions. So the fact that Paul raises the issue of dress here, in connection with the women, does not make it any more an exclusive female domain, any more than speaking about men in prayer in verse 8 makes prayer a specific or exclusive male domain. Paul’s purpose, then, in verse 9, as he begins to address the woman, is to strike at the point at which, in her piety, in her pursuits of her religion, the woman is most vulnerable. When he’s talking about dress, he’s going right to the heart. ministry to these Christian women at Ephesus, where Timothy is presently serving, than is to force these women to face themselves. It is to force them to lay a blow against their own stereotypical self-image. for just as men locate their power in their independence and in their self-sufficiency, thus for them no need for prayer. So women locate their power, Paul is saying, in their appearance upon which they can expend great amounts of time, money, and energy.

    Now, please understand, Paul here is not becoming an advocate for potato sex. In fact, it’s very interesting that he doesn’t go on to list what the appropriate apparel is. You see, Paul is not a ligament. But he is addressing these women very directly and forthrightly. Women! He is, as if he were saying, away from the world’s expectations. Be done with those expectations. Away from the suggestions of the flesh.

    Conform yourselves to God’s expectations and the demands of the Spirit, and more particularly, and somewhat parathetically at this point, conform yourself. to the dictates of that administration that has been inaugurated in Jesus Christ. Submission here makes you a woman of great usefulness to the Church and to the King. In fact, your inability to submit at this most basic level of Christian devotion to mitigates true usefulness to the Church and Christ’s Kingdom. Just as the inability of a man to submit himself at the basic level of prayer mitigates his genuine usefulness to Christ and her prophets.

    It is clear then, is it not, that Paul is pressing for the cultivation of the inner of the soul, the cultivation that comes to expression in lives, male and female lives, of holiness. Of holiness. Sin, after all, knows no gender. Sin, after all, knows no gender. But notice, as we consider what comes to expression in these lives, these male and female lives, in each case, what comes to expression positively supplies what we ordinarily according to our sinful nature, think to be lost. Although the man of God seems to the world to be unmanly in his subservience to God in prayer, here, specifically in prayer, the true man takes shape, discovering a strength in God and from God the world does not know or understand. And like men are also the women who belong to the world. They discover their real beauty. Abandoning, then, whatever suggestion there is of braveness. Let’s not be naive about this. Abandoning whatever suggestion there is of braveness. forsaking the flaunting of one’s body, bangles, and beads.

    The woman of God adorns herself with modesty and good works, and this out of her love for her Savior and her commitment to his kingdom. But consider the depth of this matter in light of the history of salvation. We will recall from our reading this morning, Psalm 45, the bride of the king, the daughter of the king, is described as beautiful and the object of the king’s desire. Time is spent describing her in her beauty. Her clothing is interwoven with gold. She is lavishly dressed in expensive embroidery.

    The figurative sense of this Old Testament language now gives way to the reality of which it spoke in Jesus Christ, His Church, and the Kingdom. The adornment of women bound to Christ has to do with the inner woman that finds external expression in modest dress and a life devoted to the doing of good. But we can go further than that. in terms of the positive implications of what Paul is suggesting here in this ninth verse and following. We can go further.

    In light of the new and heavenly administration of Jesus Christ, whatever finally you want to talk about, attached to the Old Testament administration, that is laid aside and abrogated in light of deeper and more eternal things. In light of the new and heavenly administration of Jesus Christ, even the finally of a priest’s attire disappears. with all its gems and costly garments, together with all the embroidery and costly appurtenances of the temple that is all laid aside. If the temple and the Old Testament priesthood, with their outward glory and beauty, are displaced by the New Testament, how much more a woman’s outward glory? You dare not jump upon these externals. nor gives their lives to them. But the pride that such outward show and glory, the new and eternal administration of Jesus Christ, boasts a beauty that far out distances the old.

    Women, belonging as you do to this new order, born again into the kingdom of heaven, living to the glory of God and the honor of Jesus Christ in all modesty and in self-sacrificing godliness, you are more beautiful than the temple in Jerusalem and the priesthood in all of Israel.” You are more beautiful than any earthly queen, be she even the queen of Jerusalem, let alone the queen of Sheba.” Paul, a man with new eyes, sees such beauty. and by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, beckons every woman in the Church of Jesus Christ, who loves the Savior, to adorn herself for the appreciative eye of her Lord. Women of great church, will you not do the same? Will you not adorn yourself for the appreciative eye of your Lord?

    O God, we are thanking you for godly women. We rejoice in the women of this congregation. And Father, if there is weakness, we know where there is strength. And if there is sin, we know where there is forgiveness. So, O God, As we draw close to you, may our eyes be clear and our hearts pure, as we are concerned, yes, with a submissive soul, truly for the women, but also for the men. And, O God, help us that we might give holy lives, all of us, men and women, to the honor and glory of our Savior. For bear with us, O Father, and help us with our understandings. Strengthen us, O Father, for your purposes.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Praying Without Bitterness

    Praying Without Bitterness

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 20, 1994.

    About this sermon

    The ‘holy hands’ of 1 Timothy 2:8 describe a new man free to pray and worship anywhere, more than a posture to copy. That freedom rules out prayer offered in bitterness. Men lead in prayer with a humility patterned on Christ’s.

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    Sermon transcript

    We are returning this morning to 1 Timothy 2, continuing our messages on the subject of the Church, and particularly on the question, who shall lead, or even who shall teach. So we are returning to 1 Timothy 2 this morning, as we begin our consideration for concluding our messages on this chapter.

    Let us give our attention to God’s holy word. First of all, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.

    This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony borne at the proper time. For this, I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth, I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments. but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness, but I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created and then Eve, and it is not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived fell into transgression. But women shall be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint.

    Father, by your invitation, we would march right into the sanctuary of your presence. And here, O God, we would listen to what you have to say. Indeed, O God, we draw apart from the world, and we have even come to this place that we might be instructed by you. Help us, Father, that we might receive that instruction with all grace and humility. We pray this through Christ, the one who exhibits that grace and humility perfectly. Amen.

    Chapter 2 presents us with a different kind of man, the new man in Jesus Christ. 1 Timothy 2 presents us with a different kind of woman, the new woman in Jesus Christ. Verse 8, which will concern us this morning, and that because there are important matters to say with regard to this verse as we launch then into verses 9 through 15, the debated text of our age. which concerns us this morning, speaks to us directly about this different kind of man.

    First of all, note that he is no longer defined by a single location, by one place. Instead, he is described in terms of his relationship to every place, and by every place. He is a new man, recreated in Christ Jesus for a new time. That time, Jesus himself has demarcated where he spoke to the Samaritan woman, a conversation which is recorded in John’s Gospel, the fourth chapter.

    It is a time, says Jesus Christ, when neither in a Samaritan mountain shrine, nor in Jerusalem, nor any other specific locale, will the true worshipper worship the Father. Instead, in the new day, there will be this universal worship in spirit and in truth by those who are the true worshipers of God. This different kind of man is a new man, no longer confined by race, by territorial boundaries, or by a sanctuary in Jerusalem, as were the Jews.

    But as Malachi, the last of the canonical prophets, prophesied, from the rising of the sun to the setting of the same, the Lord’s name shall be great among the Gentiles. And in every place, note those words, for those are words then that are picked up by Paul in that 8th verse in 1 Timothy 2, and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name. Now, when Paul alludes to Malachi 1, verse 11, as he does in 1 Timothy 2, verse 8, He underscores the newness of this man that he has in view. Thus he speaks about prayer, but he doesn’t speak about incense.

    And by this, he makes it plain that we have now been moved into a new reality of which the incense and the author of incense And all of the preparations and ministrations appropriate to that altar were by the symbols. Told by the act of God, by the sovereign act of God, we have been moved beyond the Old Testament sanctuary service and the prescribed ministrations of the Old Testament priests performed there. The new man, therefore, prays everywhere, not just at the sanctuary, not just in territorial Israel. The new man prays everywhere.

    In fact, it seems The Paul here, in this New Testament setting, is not even talking specifically about what takes place in formal worship services. Not that they are unrelated to what he has to say here, but his specific concern is not with respect to formal worship services. Instead, he is speaking most broadly. He is speaking most comprehensively. and he is talking about what characterizes the life of the new man in Jesus Christ generally.

    In doing so, he has taken sacral, temple language from the Old Testament, and he has applied that language to the life of the believer in the broadest sense, and thus he gives the whole life of the believer the most sacred description them that all of life is holy, and all of our life is our worship. So it is, secondly, that the new man prays as Paul says, while lifting up holy hands. Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray lifting up holy hands.

    But Paul here speaks figuratively, doing the same thing here with these words, that he has done with Malachi’s words out of Malachi 1.11. Paul, therefore, does not have so much in mind our posture in prayer, in public gatherings for worship. He does not have in mind our posture in prayer, rather he has the character of our lives as we give ourselves to prayer. at any time, in any place.

    The lifting up of one’s hands in the Old Testament had to do with blessing and oath-taking, a very important fact to keep in mind. The lifting up of one’s hands in the Old Testament had to do with blessing and earth-taking, blessing and earth-taking being very much related to one another.

    And according to Numbers chapter 6, the latter verses of that chapter where he has recorded for us the great blessing which Aaron and his sons were to pronounce upon the children of Israel, These priests are given instructions from God that when God blesses his people through his priests, he is placing his name upon them. Numbers 6 verse 27. Think of it.

    In the blessing or in the benediction, the name of God is being placed upon the people of God. But in the gift of God’s name to his people, he is actually giving himself, and he is binding himself in his person to them. Blessing and oath-taking together. This means that in the blessing or in the benediction, God is pledging his life to his people. He is, as it were, lifting up his hands in oath to them, solemnly committing himself to them, binding himself to them. On the other hand, the Old Testament also speaks about the people of God blessing the Lord. Not only does the Lord bless us, but we bless him. Or, if you will, we lift up our hands in prayer to him.

    But by doing so, we are placing our names upon him in an act that is expressing the commitment of our lives. The lifting up of our hands in the Old Testament, and now as it’s carried over by Paul into this setting in 1 Timothy, has nothing to do with religious slums. It has nothing to do with ecstatic experiences that are accompanied by known or unknown languages. It has everything to do with a declared commitment on the pledging of one’s life to another. God pledging his life to us, or we pledging our lives to him. The Paul here speaks about our lives, then, is evident, is it not? that he speaks about our lives, not so much about our postures, is communicated by the use of the word holy.

    We lift up holy hands. This word holy is then emphasized by Paul and explained by what he goes on to say. He says that we are to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath. That’s the King James. The New American Standard has wrath as well, but we might well translate that as anger.

    Lifting up holy hands without anger and without bitter dissension or argument. Specifically what Paul has in mind, then, is not simply the way we pray, but the way we live. Specifically in view is the way in which we treat others, both outside the Church and also one another within the Church. cannot be compromised by anger and dissension. If they are, we do not lift up holy hands, and our prayers are unacceptable. Now, you think about it. You think about your life. You think about the rage in your soul. The bitter anger that is there and even unexpressed. Truly then, our prayers rise from lives free from anger and an argumentativeness. Our prayers rise from lives that are free from bitter contention.

    The new man therefore stands, as it is now made apparent, This new man in Christ Jesus stands not only beyond the limitations and the imperfections of the old Jewish economy, but he stands in direct counter-distinction to the old man, and the corruption of the old man inherited from Adam, and in counter-distinction to all of the corruption that is internal in that.

    Paul then in his statement is not going to rest content in just setting his position over against the Jewish position. He is going to set his position over against the world’s position. The new man then is in fact the agent. And here you see the beginning of 1 Timothy 2 comes together with what is said in verse 8. The new man, then, is the agent of the quiet and peaceable life lived with all godliness and serious dignity. Verse 2. He is the agent of a new world, the citizen of a new habitat into which all humanity is now being invited by the gospel, before this old world. and the corrupt humanity are destroyed because of their godless frivolousness.

    But note, and this of supreme importance, this new man has no newness about him, no purity of life free from anger and argument. out of which he might offer proper mediation and intercession, proper prayer, apart from the one true mediator, the man Christ Jesus, verse 5. A sexual and pure prayer comes from no other source than incorporation into Christ, union with Christ, the one whose hands are eminently holy, the one whose soul is perfectly free from all wicked and unrighteous anger.

    But you may be objective. Having listened to me so far, if you’re still with me, you may be objective. Because you observe that verse 8 of 1 Timothy 2 is specifically speaking to men. Yes, gender clarified. Not men generically, but males. Therefore, I want the men. And the reason you may be objecting is because nothing that I’ve said so far would seem to distinguish men from women in their general responsibilities and duties. Indeed, women, as well as men in every place, are to pray. lifting up holy hands without anger and dissension. Women as well as men are agents of a new world characterized by peace and quiet, in which godliness and serious dignity are the rule. Women as well as men are incorporated into Christ, are joined to Christ, that one out of whom flows perfect purity and serenity. In other words, from what has been said so far, we have said nothing that pertains especially to the male. And putting it positively, if not ironically, and even paradoxically, the female is just as much the new man in Jesus Christ as the male.

    Does this mean then that verse 8 is not about males? No. Not at all. As verse 9 quotes. Paul needs to speak directly to the males in verse 8, just as he speaks directly to the females beginning in verse 9. But how can his remarks in verse 8 be restricted to only the males?

    Certainly, as we have seen, not by way of subject matter, since men and women must pray and die in the manner prescribed in this verse. But neither can verse 8 be restricted to males only by suggesting that the verse pertains alone to the church daughters for formal worship, in which only men were supposedly allowed to pray.

    Finally, this line suggests that the practice of the church in Paul’s day was to allow not just the men, but any male member of the church to lead public prayer in worship. that there is no corroborating evidence for this conjecture whatsoever, either biblically or historically. The line of demarcation you see in the early assembly was not specifically between male and female, even though the females were not to lead in public worship. Rather, the line of demarcation in the early assembly was between those who were ordained and gifted and endowed by the Spirit, and those who were not, male or female. The position of the Church, I would say the official position of the Church of Jesus Christ, never was that any male can stand up in the assembly and lead the congregation in prayer.

    But to be sure, verse 8, there isn’t any way to get around it, verse 8 is addressed specifically to the male. The Paul speaks here as he does, not simply because he has something to say about prayer. An enterprise in which the women also are to be engaged, but because he has something to say about leadership. An enterprise in which, as he goes on to say, the women are not to be engaged. You see, the crisis in the Ephesian church was not about prayer itself. It was about leadership in the church. And Paul appeals to prayer in this context. He appeals to the activity of prayer in light of the pretentiousness and the arrogance of some men who aspire to leadership even though they are not fit for it.

    And while they are aspiring to this leadership, they are even insisting upon their right to have office or position. In fact, they are quite angry and contentious about the whole matter. Now, it could be pointed out, as it has been, that Paul is just as discouraged about the doctrinal aberrations of these people, of these men. And Paul can hardly give a sense to their doctrine. He makes that claim, for instance, in the 7th verse of the 1st chapter. These are men who aspire to be teachers of the law, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.

    But as important as the doctrine is in his consideration of these men, Paul’s judgment is that these men are also disqualified because of their lives, lives which fail to rise from Christ, and that in the most common expression of Christian devotion, these men will not humble themselves to pray. These men will not humble themselves in prayer. The new man or the new moral in Jesus Christ must be given to prayer because it is specifically in prayer that that new man actively and at the most basic level attacks his own stereotypical self-understanding. In prayer, the Lord expresses his helplessness and gives expression to that submissiveness that is proper to a Christian walk. Paul’s enemies at Ephesus have a motto. Real men don’t pray.

    Why would they? They have all the answers. All males then claiming rebirth in Jesus Christ, claiming to be new men, must live in constant awareness of their own helplessness apart from Christ. And they must be perfecting that submissiveness. Yes, that’s the word, men! It’s not another word. This is not a word that belongs solely to the consciousness of women. Paul’s point here is that the males must be submissive.

    And they demonstrate that submissiveness at a most fundamental and basic level in prayer. They are perfecting the submissiveness into which they have been introduced by and in Jesus Christ. Was Jesus Christ a male? Was he submissive? The male of the world wants nothing to do with such obvious signs of weakness and vulnerability. The life of these individuals is a life of self-sufficiency, independence, and even what they consider heroic resistance to coercion. But this is not the new male in Jesus Christ. In fact, a man is specifically qualified for leadership in Christ’s Church, not because he’s a male, but because of his humility.

    And because of the appropriation that he has made of the sufficiency of Christ in all things. And because of his dependence, yes, his utter, abject dependence upon God. and because of his self-sacrifice for the sake of others in imitation of his Saviour. And it is specifically in prayer that all of these qualities are cultivated and tested. Therefore, Paul writes I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger and contention.

    May God give to his church such men, from among whom he would be pleased to grant us leaders, especially in this day when so many leaders have seemingly bypassed prayer and instead relied upon the and that for what they consider more important and even gratifying, satisfying pursuits. We could do with far fewer prayerless celebrities, and with far more prayerful servants of our who are determined to serve the Church humbly and without anger and without contention.

    Lord, we dare not learn from the world what it means to be a man. O God, we would learn from you, and especially from Jesus Christ, your Son, who became man. We plead with you, Lord, that you would give your church, and even this congregation, men of prayer, who in prayer and with prayer are bringing to expression the essential character of their lives. And Father, we pray for a marvelous show in our midst of the kind of humility and graciousness and self-sacrifice exhibited in Christ. We pray, our Father, that as we claim our Savior, that our Savior’s claim upon us would register in lives that are reflective of his character. We pray, O God, we pray these things. Yes, even lifting up holy hands without anger and without contention.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Beyond the Moment of Conversion

    Beyond the Moment of Conversion

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 13, 1994.

    About this sermon

    The modern church fixes on a single, identifiable moment of conversion, as Luther did, but Vos’s account of justification does not depend on that kind of experience. Romans 3:22’s ‘faith of Christ’ points to Christ’s own faithfulness more than to the believer’s feelings. Justification rests on more than a memorable moment.

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    Sermon transcript

    This morning we are reading, first of all, from Romans chapter three, rather than chapter four, as we did in the bulletin, is Romans chapter three, and we are beginning with verse nine. I give you attention to the reading of God’s holy and infallible word.

    Are we better than they? No, and no wise. For we have before proved, both Jews and Gentiles, that they are all under sin, as it is written. There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There is none that doeth good, no, not one.

    Their throat is an open sepulcher. With their tongues they have used a deceit. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their ways, and the way of peace have they not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

    Now, we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. Therefore, by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin, that now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe, for there is no difference. For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood. to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

    Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of words? Nay, but by the law of faith. Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. Is he the God of the Jews only? Is he not also of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, seeing it as one God which shall justify the circumcision by faith and uncircumcision through faith. We do not then make void the law through faith. God forbid, yea, we established the law.”

    1 Timothy 3.16, and by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.

    Help us all Lord. That we might give ourselves to your word. And we get past personalities of preachers. To the Christ who even presently in his exaltation teaches his people through the spirit. We would ask you, Lord, therefore, that your word would be paramount to us. May this be an opportunity for us to profit from that word, even as we learn from our Savior. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

    She sat there for the longest time. It seemed like an eternity to her. She had only one thought, a question that was being put to her, and that question coming to her again and again. was the moment of my conversion. It was a spiritual emphasis week on the campus of a Christian college she attended. And that emphasis, all during the week, had been upon a crisis experience by which she and all the others who heard the messages might be certain of their right relationship with Jesus Christ. Was she aware, then, of the moment that she passed from an unconverted estate to a converted estate? Was she aware of the date the precise time she passed from wrath to grace. It seemed from what was being said by the speaker in those meetings during the week, if she could not put an exact date upon her conversion, if she did not know the exact moment of her transformation spiritually, then she had to be brought to such a moment. And it was the task of the special services and of the speaker to accomplish just that.

    But she was struggling. Because she had always, at least in her own estimation, She had always, as long as she could remember, believed in and trusted Jesus Christ for her salvation. But now, without this crisis experience she feared, she lacked what was absolutely necessary for a certifiable and true salvation. Hardly did she know it, that day she sat there, that she was a victim. She was sort of a victim of Martin Luther, the great reformer whose resistance to Rome gave birth to the Protestant Reformation. and that the reformer himself, in a certain sense, was preying upon her mind and playing with her soul.

    Now, what could I possibly mean by that? Luther is a hero, after all, is he not? Well, let me explain. For any who knows the story of Luther’s conversion, it is truly one of the grandest and most dramatic accounts in the history of Christianity with respect to spiritual transformation. As Luther recalled it, I had been captivated with an extraordinary ardor to understand Paul in the epistle to the Romans. that Luther was stumbling over a particular phrase early on in that epistle. The words, the righteousness of God, in chapter 1, verse 17, were the cause of his stumbling. This verse, Romans 1, 17, speaks about the fact that in the gospel, you can check it there, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith. But for Luther, understand him now. It is going to be difficult for you to understand him because he’s speaking now out of a medieval mindset.

    For Luther, the righteousness of God was always and only that active righteousness with which God is righteous in himself and punishes unrighteous sinners. There is no other righteousness of God. Luther concluded, therefore, that Paul was saying that the Gospel, according to this text, Romans 117, revealed God’s righteous anger against sinners. But where, Luther asked, was there a sinner greater than himself?

    His interpretation of this verse brought his sinfulness out all the more. And in response to it, he said, I did not love God, I hated Him. Secretly, if not blasphemously, I was angry with God, and I said inside myself, as if it was not enough that miserable sinners, eternally lost to original sin, are crushed by the law. without having God add the pain of the gospel, and also by the gospel, threatening us with his righteousness and his wrath. With such soft Luther raged, he said, with a fierce and troubled conscience. Nevertheless, he went on, I beat upon Paul. most anxiously desiring to know what he meant, what he could have possibly meant.

    After days and nights of anguished meditation on this text, Luther saw the Spirit’s meaning. I began to understand, he explained, that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by the gift of God, namely by faith. And this is the meaning of the text. Namely, the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, specifically that passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, He who through faith is righteous shall live. Luther now saw the righteousness of God in an entirely new light. It reveals itself in the gospel to those who believe, not as wrath, but as gift, a righteousness given to us, a righteousness found in Christ alone. On the basis of this gift, true-faith sinners like Luther are declared to be just, that is, justified in God’s sight. to have gone through open doors into paradise.

    As I stated, this is truly one of the grandest and most dramatic accounts of personal transformation in the annals of Christianity, heightened because of the historical circumstances in which it occurred. And I must tell you that I am thrilled by it to the depths of my soul each time I am reminded of it or reread it. But as glorious and as genuine as it is, and I believe it to be genuine and glorious with every ounce of my spiritual energy, this testimony by Luther was subjected to an unhappy subsequent history. After Luther died, his wonderful conversion began to be connected in the minds of many who followed after him with the experience of Paul on the Damascus Road, and the account of it in Acts chapter 9.

    And thus, the experience itself was given biblical validation and looked upon as the justification for sinners. The experience itself was looked upon as the justification for sinners. Increasingly, as the evangelical and pious traditions took shape, a crisis experience such as Paul’s on the Damascus Road and Luther’s in the 16th century absorbed justification. And in the thinking and teaching of many began to define, yes, even exclusively, what true conversion is.

    In other words, if you’re missing the drift, in other words, if you cannot point in your life to a crisis experience, you are not regenerated. If you cannot pinpoint the day and the hour, you are not saved. A difficulty faced by that young woman mentioned at the beginning of this message was the result of just such thinking. Now she may have needed to be converted, having rested all of her life in a false assurance. That is, yes, a possibility. But at the same time, Neither that institution where she was enrolled, nor the speaker under whom she then sat, had the biblical right to mandate a crisis experience as the universal and indispensable credential for a genuine conversion.”

    Now, interestingly, Luther himself was moving in a direction that suggested a much higher and more satisfying level of entrance into genuine spiritual life. And I bring this up and proceed along this course not to discount Luther’s marvelous record concerning his own conversion, or to qualify that conversion in any way, nor by way of extension to discount the testimony that some of you have with respect to your conversion, you being able to pinpoint that conversion, yes, day and hour. Praise God! Still, when we study Luther and his message, even as we look at the account of his conversion that he gives, we discover that it is other-directed. That is, it is directed away from himself and even his experience toward Christ and toward Christ’s sufficient righteousness.

    Luther had been moving profoundly in this direction even before he struggled with Romans 1.17.

    His earlier lectures on the Psalms found him struck by Christ’s recitation of Psalm 22, verse 1, from the cross, “‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ Luther was being forced in his consideration of the Psalter to see the utter desolation that Jesus himself underwent for our salvation. In other words, the experience of Christ was being brought into focus as it was being set center stage. Luther was being compelled to see the objective outside of Luther’s experience, which Jesus had undergone, and that this experience of Jesus was determinative for his—that is, Luther’s—salvation.

    And it was precisely here that Luther was locating the true ground of our hope and our deliverance. But the full impact, believe it or not, of this revolutionary insight into the biblical gospel lay undeveloped in subsequent Protestant history, until things began to open up at the beginning of the century. In 1912, Johannes Voss published a monumental study to mark the hundredth anniversary of the founding of Princeton Theological Center. That monumental study had to do with the relationship of the Holy Spirit to Paul’s doctrine of the last things, or what we call eschatology.

    Voss, in that article, made the observation that Jesus’ resurrection was Jesus’ justification. We do not ordinarily think of Jesus being justified or even being in need of a justification. Voss states that Jesus’ resurrection was Jesus’ justification, and that in this complexion of resurrection, justification for Jesus, the believer finds the true ground for his own justification. Jesus first set up And only us, because of Jesus first.

    Roth cited as biblical proof 1 Timothy 3.16, which we read this morning. A text overlooked by the Reformers and the Reformed tradition, overlooked by those who were dealing most judiciously with the issue of justification. A text that speaks about the justification of the Son. He was justified in the Spirit. That’s what the text says.

    This line of thinking, then, takes us in the direction of grounding our entire experience of salvation in Christ, in Jesus. And specifically, grounding our entire experience of salvation in the experience of Jesus. But further, it would become apparent the course of this century, how thoroughly comprehensive the range of Christ’s experience and our dependence upon it are. And that, by way of the opening up of another exegetical enigma in the Apostles’ writings. I have in mind Romans 3, verse 22. It finds parallel in Galatians 2, 16 and 20, and also in Ephesians 3, verse 12. The question is being asked, how are we to translate this verse?

    Modern translators have uniformly followed the line that Paul’s mention of faith in this verse refers to the believers then. Therefore, if you have a New American Standard in front of you, or a New International, you can see the force of that approach to translating this text. The New American Standard puts it this way, with respect to this righteousness now that has been manifest in Jesus Christ and through the gospel, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ, that is, our faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe.

    But not a few have noted The redundancy of this translation. You might have picked it up. You might have noted it yourself. A redundancy brought out, if we paraphrase the verse this way, with respect to this righteousness of God now manifested, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

    Now, because of this obvious convolution grammatically, an alternative has been proposed. One that, interestingly, tries to do justice to the literal Greek of the text, but also, of all things, to the King James rendering. That rendering, if you don’t have a King James, you can find at the top of your bulletin above the Order of Service. We read it this morning as our call to worship. It goes like this.

    Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ, not in Jesus Christ, but of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. Now, I am not certain as to exactly how the King James translators took this text as they were translating it. But their literal translation lays open the possibility for the removal of the redundancy. And the suggestion, you see, that Paul’s mention of faith in that verse does not have in mind the believer’s faith, but Jesus’ faith. This would mean, then, that Paul’s meaning is communicated along these lines. Even the righteousness of God, which is by Jesus Christ’s faith unto all and upon all them that believe. In the first instance, speaking of Christ’s faith. In the second instance, as the verse concludes, speaking about believers’ faith. No redundancy. If this is the case, if this is the case, then not only our justification, as Roth suggested, but also our faith by which we are justified. is rooted in Jesus and in his experience.

    Before I was justified, Jesus was justified, and his justification is my hope of justification. Before I believed, Jesus believed, and he believed perfectly. I now have been blessed by grace to enter into Jesus’ justification, and I have been blessed by grace to enter into the faith that he himself expressed. It is his faith that has gained the victory, and I am a beneficiary of it.

    We can take nothing away from Luther and even the great reform statements on justification by faith. By what we have said here this morning, we take nothing away from the marvelous statements on justification that appear in the Westminster Confession and the Catechism. But we do see just how much of grace our salvation is. Truly, it is even more of grace than we ever imagined. Thus, the increase of our gratitude And the absence, yes, the absolute absence. Of our confidence in our works. And our marriage. And certainly. As Paul says. Boasting is excluded. I dare not even both.

    About my faith. for it is God’s gift in and through Jesus Christ. And yes, whether I was converted with a marvelous transformation, which I can pinpoint day and hour, or whether I was from a child always conscious of my faith and my Whether I am a young lady at the Christian College or a Luther struggling with Romans 117, my eyes are directed to Jesus Christ alone. It is at that point, my friends, that the Reformation progresses. You have heard of Scripture alone. You have heard of faith alone. You have heard of grace alone. Add to it Christ alone. So then, my eyes, with the eyes of all others who would truly believe, are directed to Jesus Christ alone, who was justified in the Spirit. to a faith which he expressed.

    And I am constrained to confess. More than I ever imagined. That my life. Is here. With him. In God. Lord, it is possible that we would underestimate. The sufficiency of our faith. And it is possible that. Your church would underestimate that sufficiency.

    But Lord, draw us on now, whereby we would see the grand and glorious sufficiency of our Savior, and even the fact that our justification and the faith by which we are justified are, first of all, located in Him, even as they come to expression in us. And therefore, regardless of our experience, there is the experience of Jesus, and He is the object of our trust. Help us all that we might be mature in our walk. For we praise Christ. We praise Him even as we pray through Him.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Evangelicals and Catholics, and Justification

    Evangelicals and Catholics, and Justification

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 6, 1994.

    About this sermon

    The ‘Evangelicals and Catholics Together’ document quietly reshapes justification by faith into something both sides can sign without agreeing. The real problem behind it is ‘cultural Christianity.’ Machen, Van Til, and Vos supply the theology for seeing the difference.

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    Sermon transcript

    Once more, we are looking at Romans chapter 4. We are beginning our reading at verse 13. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy and infallible word. For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law. but through the righteousness of faith.

    For if those who are of the law are heirs, faith is made void and the promise is nullified. So the law brings about wrath, for where there is no law, neither is there violence. For this reason, it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace. In order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the law, but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, a father of many nations have I made you.

    In the sight of him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist. In hope against hope. he believed. In order that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, so shall your descendants be. And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform.

    Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now, not for his sake only was it written that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Him who was delivered up because of our transgressions and was raised because of our justification. And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. He who was revealed in the flesh was justified in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

    Let’s pray together. Our Father, you have introduced us to life. We have been born again. Our life belongs to you. It is hid with Christ. in you. Father, we know that we are provided for. That provision comes to us not in the bread of this creation, but in the bread of your word. Father, feed us, for we come to you. And Lord, knowing your word, May we be helped in our obedience. For truly, O God, we love you and we wish to serve you with all that is in us. We pray this, O God, through the very One who served you with all that was in Him, your Son. Amen. We have, just last weekend, enjoyed a very successful Reformation celebration marking the 477th anniversary of Martin Luther’s courageous act in nailing the 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg.

    However, as you listened to Dr. Hart Last week, in his messages, you could not help but be a little sad. As he talked to us about J. Gresham Machen, a man instrumental in the founding of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and a man identified at the time of his death by Caspar Whisker Hodge as the greatest theologian in the English-speaking world, you may have started to think, Where is the nation of our death? Where is the man of his stature, his integrity, his depth, and his courage? In fact, as we look out upon the Church of this present day, for a theologian of nation’s capacity and strength, we soon realize that there is not one, no, not one to be found.

    With thoughts like these, last Sunday morning’s sermon may have offered little to no consolation. In that sermon, you may recall, I stated that it appeared that we, the Protestant Church now, have entered our own dark ages. As evidence, I cited the fact that even though the twentieth century has experienced what has been called a Luther Renaissance, There has been no genuine rebirth of interest in the doctrine of justification by faith, the doctrine that stood at the center of Luther’s rediscovery of the Gospel. If we need confirmation of this tragic and even depressing truth, it comes to us not because of modernists and liberal redefinition of the doctrine of justification by faith to suit the unbelief of our time, nor because of a general rejection of or indifference to the doctrine of justification by faith across the plane of the Church, but because of the attitudes that are now found in, of all places, the evangelical link of the Protestant Church of our time.

    Maybe you haven’t heard the news. Maybe you haven’t heard about the document entitled Evangelicals and Catholics Together, subtitled A Christian Mission in the Third It was released on the world this past March 29th with great fanfare. It is a document signed by some of the leading whites of evangelicalism, who seem to do everything with a great deal of fanfare. Such leading whites as Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Chuck Coulson of Watergate Faith, founder and director of Prison Fellowship, William Fry, president of Trinity Episcopal School for the Ministry here in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, famous for his ties to Labrie, a fellowship in Switzerland, Nathan Hatch, Evangelical, church historian at Notre Dame University, Kent Till, president of Eastern Nazarene College, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Richard, now president of Full Theological Seminary in Pasadena. Mark Knoll, former member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and maybe the leading evangelical historian in the world presently.

    Thomas Oden, conservative Methodist at Drew University. J.I. Packer, who needs no introduction. Pat Robertson of the 700 Club and an ill-fated request for the presidency. Herbert Schlossberg, famous author of the book, Idols for Destruction. And last but not least, Dr. Jack White, president of Geneva College. who was also a framer of the document.

    I would think any Protestant or Catholic worth their salt would be embarrassed by this document. As to how bad it is, He would take a month’s worth of sermons morning and evening to explain. Before I’m done this morning, you may feel like I have done that. But on the doctrine of justification by faith, this document presents an extremely curious position. For example, among the issues that, quote, are frequently thought to divide us evangelicals and Catholics, unquote, a telling statement in its own right, justification by faith is not even as much as mentioned. This omission makes the document especially noteworthy, if not notorious and scandalous. It is downright dishonest.

    Such an omission could not be anything but deliberate, and suggests that these evangelicals and the Catholics who were a part of it have arrived at a point of agreement with respect to this doctrine. But you may well ask, how in the world is this possible?

    How is it possible for evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics to agree at this fundamental point by which the Reformation was conceived, given birth, and defined? For example, listen to the Reformer, John Calvin, on this essential Reformation doctrine.

    The one justified by faith, he writes, is he who, excluded from the righteousness of works, grasps the righteousness of Christ through faith, and clothed in it, appears in God’s sight not as a sinner, but as a righteous man. Justification is the acceptance with which God receives us into his favor as righteous it consists in the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us.” Now, that statement should stir any Protestant’s heart. About the time that Calvin wrote those words, The Roman Catholic Council of Trent stated its own opinion on the doctrine of justification by faith. Canon 12.

    If anyone shall say that justifying faith is nothing else than confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ’s sake, or that it is this confidence alone by which we are justified, let him be anathemized. Now, if you’re not up to speed yet this morning, you’re having a little trouble waking up, let me state that proposition for you again quite plainly and directly. The Council of Trent said that if you believe in justification by faith alone, you are damned. Now, it is difficult to imagine a more basic disagreement here. which we would judge that all honest men would recognize.

    But the document, Evangelicals and Catholics together, appears to have reached some sort of common consensus, and that without the consultation of their Church bodies whatsoever. An interesting fact in itself. While omitting the doctrine of justification from the list of items that divide them, these people have now then proffered their own definition. It goes like this.

    We affirm together that we are justified by grace through faith because of Christ. Living faith is acted in love that is nothing less than the love of Christ. You will note that this definition, despite its quotes and dependence, of and dependence upon Ephesians 2 does not expressly exclude either works or merit, nor does it affirm the exclusivity of faith as the lone instrument of justification. We are justified by faith. You finish it alone.

    These facts are significant because what is later said in the document about the subject of conversion. And here we are not dealing with a reformational doctrine of conversion at all. Conversion is no longer that momentary instantaneous transformation of sinners from wrath to grace. to regeneration by the Holy Spirit, by which sinners are enabled to believe, and thus, by this root, declared righteous before God, yes, justified. Instead, conversion, we are told, quoting now, is a continuing process so that the whole life of the Christian should be a passage from death to life, from error to truth, from sin to grace.

    Truly, the Protestant dark ages are upon us with unmistakably and crushing force. But the situation is even more desperate. Not only have conservative evangelical and Reformed Christian leaders revealed their empty-headedness and their doctrinal illiteracy, Not only have they deserted their Protestant commitments, and in some cases betrayed their confessional allegiances and broken their ordination vows, but they have proved beyond a doubt just how much we are living in a religious wasteland. One overrun by second-rate theological personalities, whose claim to fame has been by way of well-managed careers and the manipulation of the media, or in the interests of an agenda that has at its center a public presence, the interests of which are a politically and socially defined refurbishing of society itself as a sort of holy moral empire upon which all sensibly moral people can agree. Our concern is no longer, it would seem, for a doctrinal honesty and integrity that grips the clear hope of the kingdom of heaven in and through the work of our Savior, instead our concern is much more for political and social alliance, and for political and social clout on election day, through which we hope to withstand the rising tide of barbarism. Better then that we rewrite Luther’s great hymn. Those last lines that stand out in our mind would better read this way, let truth and doctrine build. Eternal life also. Our bodies we can save through the way that we behave. Our culture is forever.

    Now, in light of this desperate situation, One that witnesses the deepening shadows of a Protestant dark ages. One that witnesses the growing defection of Protestant leaders who should know better. One that can boast only of an emptiness when it comes to locating theologians of the first order. In light of this desperate situation, I am going to be a bit outrageous this morning, in the time that remains. I am going to engage not in exegesis as is my practice and is my calling, and I will apologize up front for that. But I am going to engage in a bit of unshamed promotionalism in the interests of fighting fire with fire. You see, one of the reasons, if not the major reason, we find ourselves in this desperate situation is because we have not been willing to follow the lead of those whom the Lord has raised up previously, even in this century.

    As the twentieth century began, Protestantism was faced with an immense wall. with an immense wall, much of its own making. A wall that could be described as cultural Christianity. Cultural Christianity. Religion of the civilized. A Christianity that had rejected, yes, the supernaturalism of biblical religion. This great monolith of unbelief called itself Christian, but promoted as its central doctrine a belief in the cooperation with the world for the creation of a better life for everybody.

    There have been three men who especially stand out in their courageous and profound assault against this wall. Their assault has been especially courageous because they have had to attack assumptions that even Reformed and Evangelical folk have held, where those folk even unwittingly have been supplying bricks and mortar to build the wall.

    J. Gresham Machen is one who breached the wall.

    And he did so because, as Paul Woolley said, he began to put into practice the biblical doctrine of the Church. For all that is said about nature, for all the accolades that are directed towards him, Willie singled this out as his contribution. He began to put into practice the biblical doctrine of the Church.

    Machen began to see with increasing clarity the indispensable necessity for the purity of the Church of Jesus Christ. Because the Church is bound to Jesus Christ, Because it is bound to heaven, even now, the realm of holiness and purity, the Church herself must be pure. It must be pure doctrinally, and as Nation began to see at the end of his life, it must be pure morally. That was a message that did not go over well in the ranks of cultured Christianity. and established Protestantism. Nation breached the wall of that cultural Protestantism by wielding the sword of the Church’s purity, and that with increasing consistency and integrity.

    Cornelius Van Chil is another man who breached the wall. Van Till understood that anything less than the consistent commitment to the Reformed faith, to the Reformational faith, would ultimately work to build the wall, not tear it down. No aiding and abetting the enemy, for Van Tills.

    No embrace of the wrong-headed theology that blithely goes about its business, as if all humanity, regenerated and unregenerated, share common ground in reason and experience. and reason and experience are the building blocks upon which we can view a Christian view of life. Nor can the Christian be ignorant of his distinctive way of seeing things. He is born again, he is of the Spirit, he sees things from the perspective of heaven as he engages in the common tasks of humanity.

    Manfred breached the wall by insisting upon the inviolable separateness of a Christian world and life view, and upon the absoluteness of the Reformed faith. He would not equivocate. Gerhardus Voss also breached the wall. He was the most unassuming, but the most profound and revolutionary of the three. It was Voss who saw that the greatest threat to the wall of cultured Protestantism was no bare supernaturalism that confined itself to belief in miracles. Rather, the greatest threat to this cultured Protestantism was the eschatological interest of the scriptures from beginning to end.

    That is, the fact that the biblical religion, when rightly understood, sets before us the hope of another world into which God will bring his elect, despite the fall, through the work of his Son and his Spirit. And that, to the end, that God may have communion with his people. Specifically, the work of the Son and the Spirit must be seen in light of the end. to which their works press. We are told in Romans 8 that the Spirit itself groans. In intercession on our behalf, what is the content of the groanings of the Spirit? That we might enter into the fullness of that redemption that is ours in Christ, and be clothed with our resurrection body in the last day. That is the focus and the intent of the groanings and intercessions of the Spirit.

    But specifically now, in relationship to the Son, Jesus is seen as the last man. As the last man, in whom and through whom we find our full redemption, and that redemption is sufficient, it is adequate, and there is nothing lacking there. Therefore, Vos saw that for us to be justified, giving back to that doctrine of justification, Vos saw that for us to be justified, we must be rooted in a justification that Jesus undergoes. There is the justification of Jesus, and that, you see, is the point at which the entire structure of the Roman Catholic doctrine of justification by faith falls.

    Is Jesus’ justification a double matter? Is it complete? Will you say to me that there is something lacking in that justification?” You cannot say that. It is that justification into which you have been brought by grace now, and you share it, because Jesus is the last man, and his humanity speaks for you.

    This then is the meaning, as Voss saw, of the statement in 1 Timothy 3.16, when it declares there that Christ was justified in the Spirit. Voss breached the wall by turning traditional biblical interpretation and theological inquiry head over heels with his insistence that all interpretation and inquiry must self-consciously keep the true biblical eschatological goal in view. Earlier in this century, three breached the wall.

    They stood in the breach, and they But you see, the Protestant Church has refused to follow. And we are now witnessing the consequence of that obstinance and, in some kinds, willful blindness. The document Evangelicals and Catholics together is but a consequence. It is but one consequence.

    Another is that we are left in a world with no great theological leadership, that even remotely approximates the leadership of Nathan, Van Til and Vos. God help us, and indeed He shall, as we who wish to be true to the Reformed faith are forced forward through the bridge to meet God-willing great new leaders whom God will most certainly raise up to teach us more and more about the excellencies of Jesus Christ, who is the same. yesterday, today, and forever. And whom to know is life eternal.

    Our Father, we cry out to you, because Lord, our situation may be more desperate than we admit. It may be more desperate than we can even see. But you know all things, Lord, and you know our plight. more perfectly than we know it ourselves. So, Father, we ask that your church might be helped by those who have breached the wall, and we pray this for all who confess the name of Christ, that the leadership of these men that we have spoken of this morning might be apparent that it is offered, in fact, for Jesus Christ and in his name, and that we are even able to see the pattern of our Savior in such service. But Lord, we ask that we may have courage ourselves to follow, that it may please you that once we’re through the wall and beyond it, to greet those whom you have raised up to be a help to us, servants of your spirit. And in this, O God, may the light of your gospel shine brightly, and we, your children, enjoy the full liberty that is found in that gospel which speaks to us about justification by faith alone. This we ask in Christ’s name.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Still in the Dark Ages on Justification

    Still in the Dark Ages on Justification

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 30, 1994.

    About this sermon

    Despite the Reformation’s rediscovery of justification by faith, the modern church has drifted back into something like a new Dark Ages on the doctrine, for three specific reasons laid out here. 1 Timothy 3:16’s claim that Christ was ‘justified in the spirit’ is read as a statement about the resurrection itself. Christ’s own justification, in that sense, precedes and grounds ours.

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    Sermon transcript

    Our scripture this morning is found in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 4, and we’re beginning at verse 13. Give your attention to the reading of God’s holy, infallible word. I am reading this morning from the New American Standard Version. For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the law are heirs, Faith is made void and the promise is nullified. So the law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, neither is there violation. For this reason, it is by faith that it might be in accordance with grace, in order that the promise may be certain to all the descendants, not only to those who are of the but also to those who are of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all, as it is written, a father of many nations have I made you, in the sight of him whom he believed, even God, who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist.

    In hope against hope he believed, in order that he might become a father of many nations according to that which was spoken. so shall your descendants be.” And without becoming weak in faith, he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb. Yet with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief, but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God and being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform.

    Therefore also it was reckoned to him as righteousness. Now, not only for his sake only was it written that it was reckoned to him, but for our sake also, to whom it will be reckoned as those who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, him who was delivered up for our transgressions and was raised for our justification.”

    Now, if you would turn over to 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. This is 1 Timothy 3, verse 16. And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness, he who was revealed in the flesh was justified in the Spirit, beheld by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.”

    Father, what hope do we have in your word, even as we come to it today, that you would address us? Then, O Lord, address us. Speak to us, O God, and may we be prepared for what you have to say. May we not draw back with excuses, but rather move ahead in our faith, which you encourage.

    So strengthen us by your Spirit, the Spirit of the living Christ, the Spirit who is present with us now, to bless us in the Word. Amen. What is justification? Justification is an act of God’s free grace, wherein he pardoneth all our sins and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ, imputed to us and received by faith alone. Such is the response of the Westminster Shorter Catechism to that question, what is justification?

    A response that stands well in the line of the great reformer himself, Martin Luther, who on October 31, 1517, nailed 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, thus beginning the Protestant Reformation. In 1950, a theological descendant of Martin Luther, a German historian, stated that ours has been the century of a genuine Luther Renaissance.

    Many of us gathered here this morning may be aware of this Renaissance from a variety of angles. Popularly, a great number of people from the 1950s were made aware of this Luther Renaissance through a remarkably successful film produced on the life of the Reformers. But in addition to that 1950s movie on Luther’s wife, the twentieth-century renaissance that surrounds this man found expression in an extraordinary biography written by a Yale professor by the name of Roland Beaton and entitled Here I Stand.

    This was a beautiful piece. of theological biography that amazingly communicated well to all who read it, whether highly educated or not. My own personal experience with this Luther Renaissance came at McCartney Library on the campus of Geneva College. as I stood amazed before a shelf-long set of red-bound volumes, at that time, I believe, reaching to over fifty, containing the works of Martin Luther. I became involved in the Luther Renaissance when I plunged myself into those volumes in search of an answer to the question about my own personal justification before God. How could I, a wretched sinner, stand in the presence of a holy God?

    But I must say, what I learned from that plunge, and what I have learned since those days, has made it clear that my interest in Luther has been far removed from the majority interest in this century in the Reformers. I’m not concerned this morning to analyze that majority interest and why there has been this sort of rebirth of concern for Martin Luther and his life. Rather, my concern this morning is with the way in which the doctrine of justification by faith has suffered even during this so-called Lutheran Renaissance. My judgment is that despite a sort of mass interest in the man, there has been no rebirth of interest in his doctrinal commitment. In fact, there has been quite the reverse.

    In the interest of putting that in front of you, I want to share a bit of history with you in order to help you see that we have entered no Renaissance at all, but instead we have entered a sort of Protestant Dark Ages. Lost is the light of the gospel that Luther rediscovered. Lost, seemingly, from the conscience of the Church, is the doctrine of justification by faith, which Luther saw at the center of that gospel. And this, amazingly, from those churches, that claim Luther as their father. From the last century, the nineteenth century, we observe three emerging convictions that strike at the heart of the doctrine of justification by faith as preached by Luther and the other Reformers.

    The first conviction was that all knowledge of what lies beyond this world, all knowledge of what lies beyond this world, beyond our actual experience, beyond our sense perception, is speculative, is theoretical, and ultimately useless and illusionary. You cannot know. You cannot even be certain that there is a heaven or a hell for that matter. Therefore, to ask the question, what must I do to be saved as the Philippian jailer asked that question in Acts 16, or to ask the question, how might I, a wretched sinner, be just, be righteous in the sight of the Holy As far as those questions are concerned with life in the world to come, life in a world beyond this one, is to ask a question that is as essentially stupid as it is meaningless.

    That was a conviction that swept through the Church in the nineteenth century. and we are living with the consequences. The second conviction to emerge from the last century affecting commitment to the doctrine of justification as proclaimed by Luther and the Reformers was this.

    Paul, the apostle, who presents the doctrine is a secondary and inferior figure for understanding the genius of genuine Christianity. Particularly, it is Paul who, in his doctrine of justification by faith, who held on to a Jewish legal view of the relationship between God and sinners. Paul’s doctrine of justification assumes the culpability, the guiltiness of sinners before God. A guiltiness that is resolved in a legal, underscore that word, a legal resolution in which the sins of the wicked are put upon the Christ, and the righteousness of the Christ is put to the account of the wicked, and they, sinners, are declared just in the sight of God.

    In no sense, so the judgment is, in no sense is this courtroom and legal setting where God is judged and sinners sit condemned in the dock appropriate for the religion that Jesus brought to this world. The only setting, so it was held, the only setting that is appropriate to that religion of Jesus is that of a family in which God is a loving Father and all humanity are brothers and sisters.

    The third conviction, rising from the last century, that undermines the doctrine of justification by faith. as taught by Luther and the Reformers is bound up with these previous two. Yes, justification as taught by the Reformation assumes another world. Justification as taught by the Reformers is inherently legal in character, and posits a God who is the judge, a humanity that is sinful, and a Christ who is a supernatural substitute and advocate for sinners.

    But justification also demands division. It mandates discrimination. You see, the doctrine of justification sets those who are justified over against those who are not. It makes division between those with faith and those without faith. between the Church of Jesus Christ as the assembly of the justified on the one side and the world on the other.

    The overwhelming nineteenth-century verdict on such teaching as that was that it was harmful to the true goal of genuine religion. the realization of a world community in which there are no divisions at all, and where all are engaged in the task of improving our one and only world. There is no other. And that for the enjoyment and security of a common humanity. The Church, therefore, is not distinct from the world as the assembly of the justified but an appropriate and useful center from which to advance the global enterprise of world betterment, Jesus himself being an exceptional inspiration to us in pursuing that remarkable goal.

    The message of justification by faith as it comes forth from the pages of the New Testament from the Apostle Paul is actually then counterproductive and destructive. To be sure, the twentieth century has witnessed the theological enterprise that has attempted to salvage the doctrine of justification and the Apostle Paul, but always with a backward glance to the nineteenth century. It has therefore concluded, this twentieth century expression of theology, it has therefore concluded that Paul and his doctrine of justification are alright. They are okay.

    But only as they are made to support the doctrine of universal salvation. that teaches that everyone, everywhere, is justified whether they know it or not, or whether they even care. 20th century theology that has overrun, then, Protestantism in our time declares, we are all justified. and therefore call to a universal ministry of reconciliation in the interests of social, economic, political, and ecological reform for this world.

    What should be obvious to us by now is that in our modern situation, the historic Reformation doctrine of justification by faith is lost. And where it is at least academically and intellectually understood in sophisticated arenas, it is out and out rejected. Despite the claims, therefore, we are hardly in this century experiencing a Luther Renaissance. The disappearance and rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith, with Christendom, particularly Protestant Christendom in its largest and most monolithic expression, Being unanimous in its ignorance of and contempt for this doctrine, we are in a dark ages environment in which the liberating message of the gospel of Jesus Christ lies dormant. In fact, as Dr. Hart has been reminding us this weekend, citing J. Gresham Nation as his authority, Our situation may in some ways be more desperate than that which faced Martin Luther in the sixteenth century.

    But I don’t want you to despair because of this. The God who justifies sinners Yes, as Luther taught, as Luther knew, the God who justifies sinners can rescue his Church. Indeed, which is easier? For God to declare your sins to be forgiven, or for him to revive his Church so that it rises and walks?

    But hear this, the bleakness of our present predicament calls for a grasp of justification by faith adequate to address that bleakness, sufficient to address that bleakness. If our dreary state perfectly exceeds the dreariness that Luther faced, it may well be that our desperation will here feel for us not only a finer and deeper hold on justification, but a fuller and more profound expression of that doctrine. This desperate situation is the opportunity for God, and into this situation his word comes, and it will have its mighty effect. But you may well ask, how is it possible to improve on Luther’s position? How is it possible to improve on his statement of the doctrine of justification by faith.

    Now, it has taken me a long time in this message to get to this question, with less than adequate time left to answer it. So it is obvious that this important question will demand another message and a fuller response, which, God willing, will allow to come from this pulpit. However, in the time we have left this morning, let me suggest the direction our answer must take. I’m saying it. We can and must improve on Luther’s articulation of the doctrine of justification by faith. No, not by refuting any part of what he has already articulated, heaven forbid, but by grasping that doctrine’s glory more comprehensively and more fully.

    1 Timothy 3.16 is the key.

    If the Church is going to go on to a better grasp of that doctrine and a fuller appropriation of it, it is going to have to come to grips with 1 Timothy 3.16. We, as the people of God, must come to understand what Paul means when he tells us that Christ, yes, Christ, was justified in the Spirit. That is how that text reads. Christ was justified in the Spirit. Now Luther, and all of us who have been dependent upon his marvelous rediscovery of the doctrine of justification by faith, have been, I would judge properly, concerned with our own justification. And you find that set before us in Question and Answer 33 of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which was quoted at the beginning of this message. utterly dependent upon God’s declaration to us that we are righteous in his sight, and that by grace.

    But note here that in 1 Timothy 3.16, the great apostle of justification, and this at the end of his ministry, speaks about a justification for Jesus. Now what in the world could he mean by that? We are faced here in this text with at least two problems.

    One, we are not accustomed to think about Jesus as in need of a justification. After all, he was sinless. What would we judge would be the point in Jesus’ career when he experienced a justification? When would you say that justification for Jesus took place? In conclusion this morning, I want to concentrate on that second problem. When did it take place? According to the Apostle Paul, the justification of Jesus took place in the resurrection.

    When Paul in 1 Timothy 3.16 says that he was justified in the Spirit, he is speaking about Jesus’ resurrection.

    And this then opens up to us a fuller significance for that classic text in Romans 4.25.

    He was delivered up because of our transgressions, and he was raised for our justification. He was raised on account of our justification. That’s the force of it. In other words, our justification, our personal justification, demanded his resurrection, which is, in fact, a justification for him. That is, the act of God the Father, wherein the Son was declared to be just despite the fact that he carried our sins upon. This means, then, that the deeper and more profound meaning of our justification, our personal justification, is rotated in Christ himself and in his justification.

    We are justified because, by faith, we have been enabled by grace to enter into and participate in the justification of Jesus. Before I am justified, he, my Savior, has been justified. And because he was justified, I, believing in him, am now justified. And it is his justification that I partake of, for I have entered into him.

    Such is the relationship between him and his people. even as his death and resurrection are understood so as to include me. Do you hear, Paul? I am crucified with Christ. Is he just speaking metaphorically here, folks? Is it just a fanciful simile? Is he just a fine theological poet? This man is serious. I am crucified with Christ. When he died, I died to sin. When he rose, I rose to righteousness. As his death and resurrection, then, are understood to include me. So also through grace and by faith does his justification include me.” And that’s what makes it such a settled matter. It isn’t simply a settled matter because God has declared something in heaven. It is a settled matter because God has done something in the earth. He raised his son from the dead.

    Yes, we long for a true Lutheran Renaissance, in which the doctrine of justification by faith would powerfully assert itself again for the Church of Jesus Christ. But in these extreme of our Protestant dark ages, will we not long for an even greater expression of that doctrine that Luther so wonderfully articulated. An expression of that doctrine that shouts out that our salvation, yea, our justification, is all in Christ, who himself was justified in the Spirit by the resurrection from the dead. In fact, you who believe can be as certain of your justification as you are that Jesus rose. our God. If your church appears weak and ineffectual today, and that in heaven, have pity on us and grant us again those who will preach to us without compromise the doctrines of the Reformation and the truth that Luther saw.

    But help us at all times that we would do full justice to the wide range of your word. And in this respect, O God, may you be pleased to exalt your Son even more before us as we consider the doctrine of justification by faith. That even at this point we must confess It is all of Christ, and all of it is in Him, and therefore it must be all of grace. It can be no other way. So help us, O Father, even with our confidence at flags. Help us, Father, that we would be strong in our zeal and in the certainty of our conviction. Yes, we who believe, as certain of our justification before you, despite our sins, as we are that Jesus rose again from the dead.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Correction Through Prayer

    Correction Through Prayer

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 23, 1994.

    About this sermon

    Paul had three reasons for writing to Timothy, and he corrects him through prayer as well as instruction. Paul’s own praying models what he commands in 1 Timothy 2:8. Men must pray with humility and submission, and raised hands alone are not enough.

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    Sermon transcript

    We are reading this morning from 1 Timothy chapter 1, and we are beginning with verse 12. We will be reading into the second chapter. Give your attention now to the reading of God’s fully worthy. I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord, who has strengthened me, because he considered me faithful, putting me into service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor.

    And yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly and unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus. It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all. Yet for this reason I found mercy, in order that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate his perfect patience as an example for those who would believe in him for eternal life. Now, to the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

    This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you. By them you might fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have delivered over to Satan so that they may be taught not to blaspheme.

    First of all, then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time. And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle. I am telling the truth, I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    Help us, Father, as we consider your word for we are tempted to think of it as a distant word, a word that was written long ago, which demands of us some extraordinary activity of application to ourselves. We ask rather, that we would disregard the distance between ourselves and the text, and that we would understand better, O God, how we are taken up into it. As the word then is read for us and we hear, as the word is proclaimed and we trust properly, may we be edified and that in the knowledge that we are found even within the text of scripture and are directly addressed. We pray this for Jesus’ sake, who truly is alive and ministers to us presently. Amen.

    The current pressing crisis faced by Timothy in the church at Ephesus is one of leadership. As this epistle First of Paul’s letters to Timothy opens, it is clear that this crisis over leadership has focused quite specifically on the issue of teaching. Who shall teach? Who shall teach? This question has become quite pressing for Timothy and for the Church at Ephesus for a number of reasons. One reason is given immediately by Paul as he opens this letter.

    For some at Ephesus are teaching what he has described as strange doctrine. There were, then, at Ephesus, men who imagined themselves to be teachers, but they neither understand truly the things that they are speaking about, nor are they competent in the areas in which they claim even the greatest expertise. specifically in the matter of the law. You will note verse 7 of chapter 1. So the question, who shall teach, is pressing upon Timothy and this Church, because some at Ephesus insist that they are teachers when they are not teachers at all. because some are claiming to have a handle-on doctrine when they are doctrinally unfit. It is important to notice that as Paul begins his discussion of this matter at the opening of 1 Timothy, his concern is with doctrine.

    In fact, personality and appearance and style don’t even enter into the discussion. Do you get my drift? I covet for you and for the Church of Christ an intense zeal for true doctrine. And may all of your teachers be doctrinally true. Another reason why this question is so pressing is because of defection from the faith of two teachers.

    They are named by Paul. That’s noteworthy in itself. Paul is not above naming names. They are mentioned for you in the twentieth verse of that first chapter, Hymenaeus and Alexander, and it seems that they have been excommunicated from the Church through the efforts of the Apostle Paul, efforts which he has directed towards the Church at Ephesus.

    Paul has considered necessary, makes it clear that there is indeed a great struggle going on in this congregation. But going even further, we might note that at the center of this struggle is the Apostle himself, a fact which has made it necessary for him to defend himself and his credentials. You might have noted his defense as we read through verses 12 through 17 in this first chapter, but you might also note the definitive claim that he makes for himself in the seventh verse of the second chapter, where he feels compelled to mention the fact that he is a preacher and an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. Now that statement might really catch you off guard.

    These assertions by Paul may in fact appear to you to be quite superfluous, since he’s writing to his dear son in the faith, Timothy, who knows these things. Does he not? Why would Paul have to say such things to this young man? who knows him so well, whom we assume has no question about Paul’s credentials whatsoever.

    But this question brings before us still another reason why the issue, who shall teach, is so critical. Paul’s authority in calling us a teacher hangs in the balance. This may in fact be because of the cloud that has now generally drifted over the congregation at Ephesus, where Timothy serves, but as much as that is true, the issue seems to be much more serious, not just the Church at Ephesus, then possibly having questions about Paul’s authority and apostolic claim, but Timothy as well. There are a number of texts throughout 1 Timothy that indicate that this young pastor may be wavering. He may be wavering in his commitment to Paul. So serious may it be, and this inflicted by a sense of guilt possibly, he seems to be wavering with respect to his own calling.

    There is most certainly an edge to Paul’s entreaty in verses 18 and 19 of that first chapter, where he commands Timothy to fight the good fight, maintaining the faith and a good conscience, particularly in light of this young man’s calling and ordination. Finally, the question, who shall teach, is pressing in upon the Ephesian church because, as chapter 2, verse 12 makes clear, a verse which we did not read this morning, women are demanding positions at Ephesus as teachers and leaders, and even, it would seem, they are demanding positions of ordination. or at least such positions are being demanded for them. It is highly likely that the pressure to move in this direction towards female leadership and teachers in the Church, even towards female ordination, the pressure to move in that direction has come from the same source as the strange doctrines that Paul had spoken about in verse 3 of chapter 1. the same source as the attack, the open attack, upon Paul’s calling, which he is presently enduring. The push for women’s ordination, leadership, and teaching ministry in the Church of Ephesus therefore comes at the expense of apostolic authority.

    Interestingly, the situation has not changed in twenty centuries. I will be perfectly blunt. You cannot have Paul in his biblical authority and female ordination. you must choose. If you choose female ordination, you must let the Apostle go. That is what is in the balance.

    We see that the issue, who shall teach, is very much at the forefront of Paul’s mind as he writes this letter to Timothy. But I want you to notice now the way in which Paul goes about dealing with this crisis. For his method, you see, is as instructive to us as his message, a thought that is too often overlooked and ignored. His method is as instructive as his message, for his method will most certainly preach Christ as his message. Yes, to be sure, there are his specific directives to this young man, Timothy, that stand out, yes, at the end of chapter one and throughout the entirety of this epistle.

    But I want you to observe the way in which Paul subordinates the question about teachers to the broader considerations that are opened up for us as he begins the second chapter. As we stated previously, even last week, the overarching theme of this first letter to Timothy is not found for us until we arrive at the fifteenth verse of the third chapter and what Paul says there specifically about conduct in the house of God. The question about teachings and the way in which Paul develops that question and his answer to it are subjected to an interesting metamorphosis as we move from his specific statements about teaching in the first chapter into the second chapter, where he speaks about the general topic of prayer. This metamorphosis, then, as we move from the one chapter to the other, plays out in the interest of the larger consideration of conduct in the house of God, a subject that concerns everyone, not just teachers, not just leaders.

    Everyone. The whole of the assembly is brought into view, and the pressure of the assembly is brought to bear. Observe, then, the genius of the Holy Spirit. Paul then turns to the issue of prayer at the beginning of chapter 2, a matter, the obligation to which everyone, all, are summoned. Teachers are few and select. But those who are to be given to prayer, they are to be found everywhere in the people of God and within his household. Teachers are few and select. Prayers abound. But what about teachers who won’t pray? Are you beginning to feel the pressure of this? Certainly those who teach must feel the pressure of this. What if you are a teacher who will not pray?

    What if you are a supposed shepherd who can’t give yourself to the common activities of the sheep? I understand that the best shepherd was also a sheep, the Lamb of God. What about teachers then, who see themselves perched on some sort of pedestal, separated from their people, and separated from the common activities of the children of God?

    However, it will not be merely the activity of prayer that challenges the vain and pretentious leader. No, it will be the content of prayer as well. You see, Paul is very deliberate here, in the opening verses of this second chapter, to spell out the content of prayer, the prayer he has in mind, because he knows that the teachers that oppose him at Ephesus can’t pray prayers like this.

    They won’t do it. It’s not a part of their religious repertoire. For instance, Paul’s enemies have no real true interest in all men. Verse 1. Prayers are to be made for all men. Paul’s enemies at Ephesus, these would-be teachers, these supposed experts in the law, have no interest in all men.

    In fact, their own elitist views do not allow them to ascribe to God a desire that all men be saved. that theology does not recognize the single mediatorship of the one man Christ Jesus, verse 5, nor the conclusiveness of Christ’s ransoming death for all men, in verse 6. Now, these attitudes are held by the false teachers of Ephesus not because they are some sort of prototypical Calvinists who believe in the salvation of God elect from all the nations of humanity, but because they are prototypical Gnostics, particularly of a Jewish sort, who believe that salvation belongs alone to the higher class of the spiritually attuned, those initiated into the mysteries of religious truth not by prayer, but by mystical arts. To put it very simply, these would-be teachers and shepherds know nothing of the humility that places them in the setting of the common pursuits of the people of God, for the sake of a common salvation to be shared in by all of God’s elect, gathered out of the entirety of humanity.

    But once more, as we look at the depth and the richness of this text, we are compelled to explain the genius of the Holy Spirit working through his servant, the Apostle Paul. the power and usefulness of the metamorphosis that we have spoken of as we move from chapter 1 to chapter 2.

    From the narrow issue of teachers to the wider issue of life in the house of God is being brought home to us now in what we read in verses 1 through 15, the first eight verses of which we have read this morning. Specifically then, by what is being said to men and women generally, not only to those who lead, to men and women generally. In other words, you see, Paul’s interest here is not just a backdoor assault upon the leaders, there is also the double edge of his comment which brings the entirety of the congregation into view. They too are addressed, and that’s specifically about prayer and other things. It is marvelously complex, marvelously full, and wonderfully satisfying for those who understand not just the mind of Paul, but the mind of Jesus. If I start by speaking about leaders and about myself, I end by speaking about you. So we concentrate specifically on verse 8 of that second chapter.

    The general obligation of prayer 1-7, now Paul has something to say specifically, yes, to the man. Are you listening? He has something specifically to say to the men. We cannot avoid the obvious and deliberate focus upon the men. They are clearly addressed over against the women who are themselves addressed, beginning in verse 9. So, yes, the men. Verse 8. Therefore I want men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    But what is Paul’s intention here? What’s operating in his mind? What’s behind the scene here? Does he actually have in mind some continuation of the synagogue arrangement where the men are on one side and the women are on the other? Or the men are praying and the women are doing something else? What exactly is going on here?

    Does he mean by this that he wants only men to pray? Well, such a position is blatantly absurd. Later in this very epistle, he will make specific reference to women who are called to prayer. Chapter 5, verse 5. Now, Paul does not mean that he wants only the men to pray any more than he means in verse 9 that he wants only women to dress modestly.

    Rather, it is particularly human now, it is particularly in the manner of prayer that the men are faced with that which challenged them most basically in the interests of a common Christian humility. For in prayer, men are constrained to admit their weakness and their need. And it is here, you see, that Paul’s interests for leaders and his interests for the congregation, and particularly for the men, intersect. those interests intersect at the point of Christian humility, specifically in the humility that is found in Jesus Christ himself. It is particularly then here in prayer, in prayer, hear me men, that you are compelled to counter the accepted stereotypes of yourself through abject submission to God through Christ. I have no needs. I am perfectly self-sufficient. I am wholly confident within myself. I am a man of honor. What? Me, ask?

    Is this why some of you men cannot and will not pray? Not just privately, not just before friends in the church, even before your wives and before your children. Because you have been convinced through some capitulation to the devil. That submissiveness and subordination in prayer are an attack upon your imagined identity. This business of prayer even constitutes an insult.

    Paul addresses the men on prayer because it is in prayer that men are addressed with especially with what men need to hear in order that men might prove that they are submissive. Yes, I’m using that word in relationship with men. that they are submissive to the Lord. So we’re not going to get to verses 9 through 15, but I think you know where I’m headed. Such submissiveness now that is held out in front of us Yes, in front of us men cannot but put us in mind of our mediator, the Lord Jesus, whose mediatorship on our behalf includes his own submissiveness, he being a man, and that underscored by Paul in this very section of scripture. includes his own submissiveness, and that in prayer, a submissiveness that he even now continues to exhibit in heaven. What relationship can you claim with respect to him in heaven who prays if you will not pray? Truly, gentlemen, we must be like him. Truly, gentlemen, as your pastor and friend, I want to be like him. don’t you? Let’s pray.

    Open, O God, the heavens before us that we may perceive, yes, with the eye of faith, the intercessions of our Savior and Mediator, Christ Jesus. Lord, help us all, as we, by faith, are instructed and even compelled by what we behold. And Lord, Help us manage, for it may be a very, very difficult thing for us to break past the stereotypical images that we have of ourselves in order to meet our true selves in the Word of God. And as it would be, Lord, by those who would lead, may it be of all of us, may we be found to be submissive servants, trained in humility. For Jesus said that you may be glorified and your church held in her great fight. which he wages for the Savior in this world.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • Those Who Pray Die Well

    Those Who Pray Die Well

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, October 16, 1994.

    About this sermon

    1 Timothy 2 grounds the church’s prayer in God’s purpose to gather worshipers from every nation, beyond personal devotional habit. Paul draws on Old Testament precedent for that call. Those who pray die well and lead well.

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    Sermon transcript

    We begin our reading this morning in the prophecy of Isaiah. I think everyone has figured out now that they shouldn’t trust what I put in the bulletin. We are in Isaiah chapter 56, and I am reading here verses 6 through 8. This is Isaiah 56, verses 6-8, and I am reading from the New American Standard Version. Give your attention to the Word of God.

    Also, the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant. Even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The Lord God who gathers the dispersed of Israel declares, yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered. And then turning over to the prophecy of Malachi, this is Malachi chapter one, and I am reading from verse six.

    Malachi 1.6. A son honors his father and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is my honor? If I am a master, where is my respect? Says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise my name. But you say, how have we despised thy name? You are presenting defiled food upon my altar. But you say, how have we defiled thee? in that you say the table of the Lord is to be despised. But when you present the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? When you present the lame and sick, is it not evil? Why not offer it to your governor?

    Would he be pleased with you, or would he receive you kindly, says the Lord of Hosts? But now will you not entreat God’s favor that he may be gracious to you with such an offering on your part Will he receive any of you kindly, says the Lord of Hosts, or that there were one among you who would shut the gates that you might not uselessly kindle fire on my altar? I am not pleased with you, says the Lord of Hosts, nor will I accept an offering from you. For from the rising of the sun, even to its setting, my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to my name, and a grain offering that is pure, for my name will be great among the nations,” says the Lord of Hosts.

    First of all, then, I urge that in treaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior. who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. There is one God and one mediator also between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony born at the proper time. And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth, I am not lying, as a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. Therefore, I want men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without wrath and dissension.

    Our Father, we do ask you to help us in every bit of our worship. Yes, Lord, there is that which we seek for ourselves, that we might be fed and nourished. But there is also that which we seek for others, that they might be fed and nourished too. Therefore, O God, May we be concerned about our deportment in worship, our conduct in the assembly of your people. And help us, O Father, lest we become a source of stumbling for others. Help us, O God, so that our concentration might be an encouragement to others in their concentration. May we attend then upon your word as we have heard it this morning and as it is preached. We pray this for Jesus Christ himself by the Spirit is with us. Encourage us through him. Amen.

    Now it is my intention to work towards the title that appears in the bulletin this morning, specifically, Who Shall Teach? And I think that there will be enough evidences of that as we move our way through our message this morning, although in certain respects this sermon in strict terms of that title will prove to be a disappointment. So you can be assured that more will follow. My intention this morning is to do a bit of back-filling, a bit of back-tracking.

    We have been considering 1 Timothy, chapter 3. That’s why I say back-filling and back-tracking. We have been considering 1 Timothy, chapter 3, verses 14 through 16, and that in connection with our series on the Church, the subject of the Church. And our interest, specifically now, with regard to these latter verses in 1 Timothy 3, has been to set out Paul’s purpose in writing this, his first letter, to Timothy, his beloved son in the faith. Now, once more, and briefly, I will review what we have seen from those latter verses 1 Timothy 3.

    Since Paul will be delayed in coming to Timothy at Ephesus, verse 14, he now writes to this young pastor so that he might know, so he says, how to conduct himself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, truth’s pillar and memorial, verse 15. Verse 16 serves as a reminder to Timothy of a common point of view. By common confession, Paul says, great is the mystery of godliness. So, verse 16 here is set as a reminder to Timothy of a common point of view to be held by the Church leadership, to be sure, but that in concert with all. in the Church of Jesus Christ, and that in the strictest and in the deepest humility.”

    Now, it is this dual consideration that is going to play itself out throughout the entirety of this first letter to Timothy. The dual consideration of a focus towards leadership on the one hand, and then to the congregation as a whole on the other. And these two considerations will intermingle throughout Paul’s writing.

    So much do they intermingle, you might note, that when Paul comes to the end of 1 Timothy, he has a final statement to make, a benediction that is couched in the plural, not in the singular. He says, Grace be with you. And the U there is a plural pronoun, it is not a singular pronoun, so you can see that Paul all along, though addressing Timothy and not quite directly, has the Church as a whole very much in view.

    But backing up now into chapter two. We are enabled here, if we look at things correctly, to see that the Apostle is actually prosecuting his case for the conclusions that he is going to arrive at in that pivotal and encapsulating statement at the end of chapter 3. He is building to that point. In other words, what Paul says in 1 Timothy 3, 14 through 16, and most particularly in that 15th verse, about conduct in the house of God is directly related to the matters that he is discussing in chapter 2. And interestingly now, in making his comments here in chapter 2, in building towards the expression of this Capsule statement in chapter 3, verse 15, about conduct in the house of God, Paul, now here in chapter 2 at its beginning, turns first of all to the subject of prayer.

    Now, you might note the emphasis. For as you run down through the verses there, it is obvious, is it not, that first of all, the consideration is prayer in the widest and most common expression. That is to say, Paul here speaks about prayer as a primary activity of not just a few or even of the ordained, but of all, even though he’s going to come back to that subject of leadership. and he will even subordinate what he has to say here to that issue of leadership before he is done.

    The sound that is to come from God’s people In the language of 1 Timothy 3.15, the conduct of the first order by which they are to be known is prayer. The sound that is to come from the people of God, the conduct of the first order by which they are to be known, is not to be the hubbub of an infinite number of social enterprises and activities It is not to be the hubbub of bazaars, or rummage sales, or other social events held in the basement of a church.

    Nor is it to be the cries and the screams of elation that come from people engaged in recreation. Least of all, bingo games. It is not to be the rumble of the multi-level mass program for the youth, for the middle-aged, and even for the moderately senile. It is not even in the first place to be the clanging of silverware, the clinking of china and glassware at the church supper, as important and as enjoyable as that supper might be. Now, the sound that is to come from the people of God, the conduct of the first order by which they are to be marked, is prayer.

    But in looking at Paul’s appeals for prayer in 1 Timothy 2, verses 1 through 8, we must not allow ourselves to slip off into a world of silly mindlessness that has become the habit of too many in expressing what they consider to be Christian piety in our times.

    The Apostle has grounded his exhortations. He has based his urgings in the purposes of God and in God’s accomplishment in establishing for himself a new house, a new temple, his church, truth, pillar, and memorial through the work and person of Jesus Christ. In other words, Paul’s appeal now here for prayer is quintessentially redemptive, historical, doctrinal, and theological in the highest order. We are dealing with substantive matters. not mindless sentiment. Now, in order to understand exactly how the Apostle Paul works off of this redemptive historical background and pushes forward his doctrinal and theological interest, we need to look at these verses First of all, grouping 1 through 7, and then verse 8 by itself. You will note how Paul, in dealing with verses 1 through 7, sets before us the universal scope of God’s redemptive purpose.

    And he’s not here apologizing for his language. Yes, I believe that Paul is thoroughly Augustinian and Calvinistic. But he is not apologizing for his language at this point, and you will note the universal scope of that language and interest of the Apostle.

    All the nations are being gathered into God’s new house, into his new temple. Think of it. The privilege of a few has now become the privilege of the many. And it is a privilege into which you have been introduced by grace. All the nations are being gathered now into God’s new house, into His new temple. The prophets themselves saw this day coming. a time when the nations would stream up into the house of the Lord.

    That’s why I read for you this morning Isaiah chapter 56, verses 6 through 8. You may want to look at those verses again. In verse 6, aliens and strangers—Gentiles—unite themselves to the Lord. These who are unclean and outsiders are described as if they are ministers themselves to the Lord in His sanctuary. They keep the Sabbath, and they celebrate the sacraments.

    In verse 7 of Isaiah 56, God says that He will bring them, that is, the nations, to His holy mountain, to joyous celebration in His house of prayer. and to a position in which they will offer acceptable sacrifices to him. For my house, says the Lord, will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

    Now that text may well sound very familiar to you, because you are acquainted with the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem and his cleansing of the temple. You might check out in this respect Mark 11, verse 17, where Jesus quotes this Isaian text to indicate that the day envisioned by the prophet has dawned in him and in his wife. Paul’s appeal then for prayer is based upon His knowledge of the fulfillment of this Isaian text. Prayers with thanksgiving must be made for all men now, for rulers and for governments, given God’s universal intention and His desire to save all sorts of people through the mediation of the one man Christ Jesus, the man who paid himself a ransom, yes, for his own, but his own being drawn now from all of the tribes of the earth.”

    But with Isaiah 56, together with Jesus’ closure of that text, in his cleansing of the temple, lying behind Paul’s appeal now for prayer, as he speaks to Timothy here, the opening of his second chapter in the first letter to his beloved son in the faith, Paul then goes on to deepen his appeal by what he has to say in verse 8. It is here that Paul alludes to the second passage that we read this morning. It is here that he alludes to Malachi chapter 1, verse 11. The Lord, in this Malachi text, has been making his case against his people Israel, who have doubted his love, but specifically, at the point in which we began to read, those priests who defile his altar with mutilated, inferior, and deformed offerings, verses 6-9.

    Therefore, the Lord no longer accepts their offerings, and in a truly ominous text, and that’s why I read to you this morning from the New American Standard Version, In a truly ominous text, the Lord Himself anticipates and even longs for the closing of the temple gates in Jerusalem. Verse 10. Can you imagine the closing of those gates? The Lord Himself wishing for nothing less than that. But then the Lord proceeds, through his prophet, in a verse as glorious as the previous one was ominous, to declare that his name will be great among the nations. From morning to evening, in every place, prayers will be offered in his name.

    Verse 11. It is that phrase, in every place, that finds perfect match in 1 Timothy 2 verse 8. Paul is lifting it right out of that Malachi text. Notice now how Paul’s use of the Malachi allusion in verse 8 complements his use of Isaiah 56 in verses 1 through 7 in 1 Timothy 2.

    Isaiah, you will recall, sees all the nations gathering into one place. unto the Lord’s holy house of prayer. Malachi, on the other hand, sees the nations in every place offering acceptable praise and prayer. The beauty and the power of Paul’s appeal in 1 Timothy 2 is that both Isaiah and Malachi in his writing then converge.

    In the New House, in the New Testament, The church, the one through God, dwells with his people whom he gathers for prayer from over the face of the entire world by the mediation of the final priest, Christ Jesus. But while gathered, these who are gathered remain those who in every place offer service in prayer.” Verse 8, “…in one place, yet in every place, through the one man for all men.”

    And we all are the privileged. to live in the reality of what the prophets foresaw. This, then, motivates the Apostle all the more to write as he does, calling the Church to prayer. We have been welcomed into God’s new house in prayer. We offer acceptable sacrifices. Indeed, when it comes to our conduct in the house of God, Of great importance is prayer, since in this day of the gospel the Lord has opened access for all the nations to enter into the one place from every place.” Now, there are many things that I could say to you about this matter of prayer and its importance to the people of God. But I will draw from my experience of twenty-two years in the ministry to set before you this consideration.

    Those who pray well die well. Those who pray well die well. I have watched many people age in my 22 years of service, and I have watched a number of even professing Christians go into old age filled with bitterness. And I dare say that those are precisely the people who have never learned the lessons of First Timothy two. As we get older, there may be questions about how we fill up our day, what we do with our But the person who has given himself or herself to prayer has no question about what they should be about.

    I can encourage you then, on this very practical note, as you move on in life, as your own end draws nearer, that you give yourself to prayer. But still, as I promised earlier in the message, there is a further consideration. It is true that Paul speaks here in these verses about a universal privilege and duty that falls to God’s people as a whole. However, there is a specific interest of this epistle as it concerns the matter of leadership. And even here, as he speaks about prayer, that matter of leadership is coming into play. He is writing to Timothy. even though others are addressed through Timothy by the letter itself.

    Timothy is a leader in the church at Ephesus presently. Also, as is obvious from what appears here in this letter, Timothy is facing the threat of both women and men who wish to lead, but for various reasons cannot and even must not. Also, there are obvious defections from among the leaders. If you look at the end of chapter one, you can see the names of a couple of defectors. Paul’s ministry, his leadership itself, is under attack.

    And before he is done, he will speak specifically, directly, about the matter of bishops and deacons in chapter three. So, leadership, yes. is very much to the point, and serves to narrow our concern. You understand, then, what the Apostle is doing as he rushes to the common activity of prayer, but has in the back of his mind how this is going to play itself out in terms of leadership. By taking prayer and even the common practice of it, Paul has set before leaders—he has set before Timothy, he has set before supposed leaders, he has set before leaders who want to be leaders—the most fundamental of criteria. Leaders must rise out of the wild world of common prayer. Leaders must rise out of the wide world of common prayer.

    Leaders must be men humbled and proved in their sincerity, because they have given themselves to this fundamental, vital, and glorious enterprise. And if they don’t understand that, they don’t understand anything. To put it very bluntly, if you’re not given the prayer, you aren’t fit to lead. Amen. Let’s pray.

    How we love you, O God. And how our love is trained increasingly by the depths that we discover in your word. That we have been welcomed now into the new house of the Lord, into your temple, the new temple. and made to behold wonder, and even through faith, your glorious presence. How our consciences have been quieted through the blood of Christ, our medium. But how now, Lord, we are congregated, and as the incense rose morning and evening from the altar in the temple. So our prayers rise presently. And this, Lord, in order that our communion with you may be enjoyed all the more and the covenantal bond that is between us, realized in us all the more.

    Help us, Lord, we who are not leaders in the Church, to give ourselves to prayer, that all of us, Lord, who would lead May we rise from this common expression and experience of prayer. Thus, Lord, may we be commended by you in the presence of all because we are men of prayer. Help us, Lord, and bless your church with congregations that are filled with prayer and leaders who love to pray.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

  • A Common Confession Against Self-Esteem

    A Common Confession Against Self-Esteem

    This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Considering the Church” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, September 18, 1994.

    About this sermon

    The ancient confession of 1 Timothy 3:16 stands against a modern cult of self-esteem that has crept into the church’s view of itself. Paul draws his definition of ‘pastor’ from the Old Testament, far from contemporary leadership theory. The verse recovers what the earliest church simply confessed together.

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    Sermon transcript

    We begin our reading this morning in Matthew 20, beginning at verse 17. I give your attention to the reading of God’s holy and infallible word. And Jesus, going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart in the way and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock and to scourge, and to crucify him, and the third day he shall rise again.

    Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children with her sons, worshipping him and desiring a certain thing of him. And he said unto her, What wilt thou? She saith unto him, Grant that these my two sons may sit, one on thy right hand and the other on the left, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said, Ye know not what ye ask.

    Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They say unto him, We are able. He saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of my cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with. But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give, but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared of my Father.

    And when the ten heard it, they were moved with indignation against the two brethren. But Jesus called them unto him and said, Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister, and whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for men.”

    Then turning over to 1 Timothy 3, reading from verse 14, this is 1 Timothy 3.14. These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and mainstay of the truth. And by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received back into glory.

    Let’s pray together. Help each one of us, Lord, young and old, not to allow anything to intrude upon your word, to blot out our consideration of it. So may we be focused, Lord, upon you, back to the benefit of our souls. I ask for myself that there may not be anything in me that would intrude upon your word and hinder its communication. Bless us as a congregation that confesses our love for you and our devotion to Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

    Now, when we come to 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, it is imperative that we keep before us Paul’s basic concern in this letter. That concern is stated for us very conveniently in verse 15, although it has taken the Apostle three chapters to get around to telling us what it is. That concern is stated for us, as I said, in verse 15.

    Paul is distressed. That is the note that is rising from beneath the surface of his words, always distressed because of some great spiritual, some great doctrinal danger to both Timothy and to the Church at Ephesus where Timothy is presently serving. Now he fears his delay in coming to Timothy. So he writes to this man in order that, as he says, he might know how to behave himself or how to conduct matters in the house of God, a church that is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and mainstay or memorial or monument or abode of the truth.

    Oddly, many commentators, as they move into the 16th verse, lose the sense of Paul’s argument with Timothy, and treat verse 16 as if it were a non sequitur. It has been identified, the 16th verse, for example, as a brief digression. He has also been identified as an ecstatic outburst, as if Paul at this point, at the 16th verse, is overcome and can’t do anything else but burst forth in doxological praise. But the verse, you see, then, stands by itself in the judgment of these commentators.

    It is my hope that we might see something of the interconnectedness of these two verses before we end this morning, including that this sixteenth verse is neither digression nor outburst, but a deepening of the Apostle’s essential concern for Timothy’s behavior with respect to the truth. And this concern, laid in against the background of a very powerful and glorious presentation of the Church in light of Old Testament temple imagery. Now last week, as we dealt with verse 15, we spoke at length about that glorious powerful Old Testament temple imagery that comes to bear upon the Apostle’s vocabulary. From Paul’s perspective, I’ll ask you to call to mind what you know about that Old Testament revelation. From Paul’s perspective, The Church, follow him as he moves through there, 15th verse now, 15th verse now.

    The Church, that is the people, we have certainly satisfied ourselves on that account, have we not? The Church, that is the people, we are not talking about building, we are not talking about structure, we are not even talking about hierarchy or the leadership of the Church being identified as the Church. No, the Church is the people. And from Paul’s perspective, these people now are God’s house. They are also his assembly. That is what the word Church means. But even going further than that, if you can imagine it, he goes on to identify them with the pillar. Think what that might mean.

    What pillar is there that presents itself, for your consideration, out of the Old Testament, and that particularly in connection with the Temple? Is it not the glory cloud of the Lord? So the Church is God’s house, it is his assembly, it is his glory cloud, and it is his memorial, his mainstay.

    Actually, this last term is even more glorious than we stated last week. We could move in the direction of the foundations of the temple which, in Old Testament language, was immovable. Of course, we found that the Old Testament temple was movable, and we look for a temple and a drawing place that has a foundation that cannot be moved. But even beyond this possible reference to the foundation of the Temple, there may be something here that is even more magnificent still, as we think about that which is permanent, or a symbol of permanence in that Old Testament Temple.

    We have the glory cloud in the pillar, but you know that glory cloud comes and stands over the mercy seat that covers the Ark of Not only are you the house, not only are you the assembly, you are the veritable glorified and earth of the covenant of the Lord.

    In other words, there simply is nothing more glorious on earth. In the estimations of the Apostle Paul, than the Church of Jesus Christ. Nothing. It is virtually identified as the meaning of those things in the Old Testament that draw into consideration the Lord’s most holy, overwhelming, and unapproachable splendor. In short, the Church is not only the new people of God thus displacing the old Israel, but she is the new temple thus displacing the old temple, together with all of the old temple’s most astonishing chapters and treasures.

    Our world and even our modern church is caught up in a cult that is just as damaging as the cult of Diana, whose temple stood in Ephesus where Timothy labored. Our world and the modern church are caught up in the cult of self-esteem. A cult that preaches that we must tell ourselves and our children lies so that they, so that both we and they, will think as highly of ourselves as the leaders of the cult say we are entitled to think. I am the greatest. We’re very close to it. The problem with the self-esteem cult, in part, is its inability to assess rightly the truth about human depravity and the appropriateness of a low view of ourselves.

    We express that low view when we state in joining this Church that because of our sinfulness we abhor, that is, we hate, and humble ourselves before God. And this low view extends even to our children when in presenting them for baptism we acknowledge that they are conceived and born in sin and are subject to condemnation. We are not under any delusion. We and our children are sinners. The cult of self-esteem has no appreciation for these fundamental truths. But the cult of self-esteem equally has no ability to take the members of Christ’s Church to the heights of their true value.

    The message of self-esteem falls short For you see, our self-esteem comes by way of our union with Christ and by the inclusion in him. A reality not of us or because of us, but in spite of us, affected by Christ’s death and resurrection for us and applied to us by his Holy Spirit. Such esteem as we have for ourselves is not generated by vain and insidious self-deception, but by our inclusion in Christ, by which we have become God’s house, his assembly, his bull, cloud, and his ark. Filled with such thoughts, indeed, filled our children with such thoughts. must lose its sting, because it simply cannot take us high enough.

    Jesus Christ takes us higher than even the temple, the cloud, and the ark of the Old Testament, and certainly far beyond the limits of any pagan cult, be it the cult of self-esteem or that of the Greek goddess Diana, whose temple was within range of the Church.

    If then we have established for ourselves the fact that Paul here is building his case with Timothy as he expresses his concern for this man by taking Old Testament language and applying it to the Church, as that Church is the new temple of God. We do not hesitate at the same time to suggest that Paul’s interest in 1 Timothy concerns the very practical and immediate question of leadership in this new temple. I might say that this is the thing that is lost sight of as we move through Paul’s argument in 1 Timothy. He is building his case for order and leadership in the church against the background of his conviction that the church is the new temple. And since we no longer have a priesthood that is given to us by heredity, what kind of leaders are we going to have in this new temple? The leadership that Timothy is to exercise in the new temple answers the leadership exercised by the priests in the Old Testament temple. But it is of interest that although Timothy renders service in this new temple, he is not called anywhere a priest. In fact, and it’s not without reason, those who carry an ordination similar to Timothy are called pastors.

    This is a pastoral measure. Such individuals we call ministers. And how expressive that title is. It rises for us in our ecclesiastical vocabulary naturally out of a passage like Matthew 20. And very possibly, Matthew 20, 28, where Jesus said the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many.

    One cannot enter Church leadership, let alone conduct himself in that leadership in such a way that suggests that Church leadership is a means of gain, a route for personal aggrandizement. It shatters the personal advantage, a means by which one might exercise authority over others. Just for the sake of exercising authority. From Paul’s point of view, church leaders, although rendering special service now in God’s new temple, are not a caste of privileged characters. Their interests must not be themselves. Their interests must be others.

    As God, for Christ’s sake, sees those others, and Paul tells us how God sees them, he sees them as his heart, as his assembly, as his glory cross, as his throne, and as his ark. So exceedingly dear are these, then, to God. who make up his church that he does not hesitate to describe them through his apostle in ways that underscore their identification with God himself in his most holy and hallowed association from the Old Testament.

    But if this hasn’t put the dangerously ambitious the overachieving, power-hungry church leader in his place, Paul goes on to speak about the great mystery of godliness in verse 16. The New American Standard, in its translation of the intro in verse 16, puts it this way, and by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. It is a common confession that expresses this mystery. Now, obviously the leaders of the Church are compelled to recite it themselves, or to sing, if this confession is a hymn, in unison with all of God’s people. Now to say the least, it is quite easy to miss the point of Paul’s citation of this primitive but profound creed that we find in the 16th verse.

    Notice the first line in the creed. He, that is Christ, was revealed in the flesh, obviously a reference to Christ’s incarnation. Now drop down to the last line of the creed, line 6. He was taken up into glory, obviously a reference to his ascension.

    Now these two lines provide the outside parameters of the confession, which seems natural enough since they represent a chronological development from the point of Christ’s entrance into the world in his incarnation to the point of his departure in his ascension.

    But in between these parameters, are set four more lines that do not follow the chronological frame of these two outside statements. There’s a certain development in them, to be sure. There’s a certain chronology, but then there is the interruption. Line two.

    He was justified in the Spirit. What does that mean? It is a reference to Christ’s resurrection, if you were in a fog as to what was being referred to there. He was justified in the spirit, that is his resurrection. He was beheld by angels also, related to the resurrection, but now as he is revealed to the angels in his glorified body, Line 4, he was proclaimed among the nations.

    It seems like we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. Line 5, believe God in the world. We’re certainly getting ahead of ourselves, are we not? But these speak now, lines 4 and 5, about the effects of the preaching of the gospel, effects that come to light only after Christ’s ascension into glory. The very truth that is reserved in the Confession for the last line. taken up into glory. Now you have the question.

    Why should these statements about things that happen after the Ascension be placed before the statement that speaks about the Ascension? Why should we hear about Christ being proclaimed among the nations believed on in the world which speaks to us about the progress of the gospel, why should we hear about these things before we hear about the Ascension itself? Why is the Ascension, then, reserved for the end? upon the Church, and upon would-be leaders in the Church.

    The intention in the Confession, verse 16, you see, is that nothing is to be left out or excluded from the Lord’s career as our Savior. And it is precisely this point that Paul now pounces upon for the purpose of helping Timothy. You see, by quoting the Confession, certainly one, obviously, that Timothy has recited himself, Paul tells Timothy that every aspect of Christ’s mission Even those aspects that Timothy might be tempted to think depended upon him, like the gospel’s proclamation to the nation for belief in the world, had already been accomplished before Timothy ended up. The citation of the Confession And his recitation of the mystery of godliness in the career of our Savior serves to remind Timothy that his ministry is but an entering into an already completed ministry.

    And because that is the case, there is absolutely no place for pride, for self-contradiction, Self-adulation. Self-promotion. There is no place for Timothy seeking his own advantage. He is merely entering into a ministry that is already complete in itself. Even the Gospel’s proclamation to the nations is complete in Christ. We are merely entering into it, and that as a privilege to us by our Lord. So Paul is putting this beloved son in the face. I don’t know that there’s anyone he loves more than Timothy.

    He is putting this beloved Son in the faith, gently directing them in this place by subordinating Him, in verse 15, to the Church. Indeed, after the likeness of Christ’s own subordination, by which Christ made Himself a servant, that the Church might be saved. But Paul is also putting his beloved son in the faith in his place by subordinating him to the fullness of Christ’s accomplishment. And that entails not just a following after Christ, but an entering into him that grace may be affirmed and never contradicted. But be clear on this, if Timothy is put in his place, you are put in your place.

    For although Paul is speaking here to a pastor, a church leader, In verse 16, he is citing a common confession, one that we all say and affirm, one that we all embrace, lest the least pride be found in any one of us. Indeed, what God would drive out of those who lead, he would drive out of those who are led. But we will start with ourselves, O God, and we will not make excuse. We know, O Lord, that there is that in us that is self-protective, even to the point as sin is conceived and brought to birth, that we seek our own advantage behind a wall that we ourselves have constructed.

    But the apostle, your servant, inspired by your spirit, breaks down these walls even with his dear friend, Timothy. That Timothy might see the church as he should, and himself as a minister. But even more magnificently, that he might see himself in Christ. And that all that needs to be done has been done in Jesus. Even the proclamation of the gospel to the ends of the earth. And Timothy’s ministry, and ministry of any true church, is but that of entering in to what is complete in Jesus.

    That it all might be of grace. But help each one of us, O God. For we have confessed that we would be led by the Christ, your Son. And therefore, Lord, we would learn humility in all that we do. We plead with you, O God, that in this, what you have commended in your servants who read, may be found also in us.

    The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.