A Gospeled Man

by Jared Wilson

 

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. – 1 Tim 6:11-12

As I view what it means to be a man through the lens of this instruction from Paul to Timothy, I am reminded again of the holy activity of true masculinity (and true personhood, generally). Flee, pursue, fight, take hold. Paul is nothing if not verby. I am struck, though, by how often I fail at these things. I am busy about things that so often don’t matter and passive about things that do. I am lazy. I can’t be bothered. And when I look for where I ought to get the oomph of holy pursuit from, I see Paul couching the masculine imperatives in the masculine indicative: “O man of God.” If this is what I am, this is what I can do. Furthermore, I see the importance of “taking hold of the eternal life to which I was called” for the other actions.

 

The godly man is a gospeled man. He has seen who he is in Christ, he is moved by what God has done for him in Christ. If I don’t get this part, all the rest will just be a self-salvation project, an exercise in self-righteousness.

 

I need a better vision. I need a better vision than simply that of myself as a “manly man” going about some religious busywork. I need a vision of the conquering, saving, loving Savior who has done all these things for me and covers my failures at doing them myself.

If biblical manhood is about denying excuses and taking responsibility — and I think it is — I begin to think of all the excuses the God-Man could have made when it came to loving and saving me. He could have shaken his head and cataloged my list of deep unworthinesses:

 

Father, he’s so sinful. He’s always struggling with lust and he looks at pornography.

Father, he’s so lazy. He doesn’t deserve all this effort.

Father, he’s so unspiritual. He won’t even pick up the Word to read a few lines.

Father, he doesn’t treat his wife the way she ought to be treated.

Father, he’s not the kind of guy who could set the world on fire, is he?

Father, he’s so passive. He’s so timid. He’s such a coward

Father, he’s so prideful. He enjoys praise too much and he’s selfish.

Father, he’s short-tempered. He leaps to defend himself too much.

Father, he’s such a failure, a nobody, a loser. He’s a stuttering wimp, just like that girl in the 5th grade said he was. He is what he always feared his family thought he was. He doesn’t deserve a second glance like those bosses at his first job proved. He is what his critics say he is, worthy of scorn and derision and unworthy of forgiveness. He is what the Accuser says he is, only as good as what he has failed to do and deserving of eternal condemnation.

But with his atoning sacrifice Jesus doesn’t say any of those things about me. He says “Father, this man is your son and you’ve set your affections on him. So I am pleased to die for him.”

 

So I write this today not as a perfect man, but as a gospeled man, because I have taken hold of Christ having taken hold of me (Phil. 3:12). I have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb, and now by God’s grace I am empowered to love well and serve well and husband well and daddy well and pastor well. And so can you, men of God, if you will but lay hold of it.

 

Take hold of this precious truth. The Son of God has set aside all the charges against you, all your sins and failings, and has taken them to the cross, killing them by dying with them, leaving them dead as he himself raises to new life — your new life, which is eternal and into which he is calling you.

 

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
– Romans 8:1

 

Jared C. Wilson is the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont and the author of the books Your Jesus is Too Safe, Gospel Wakefulness, Gospel Deeps and the Bible study resources Abide and Seven Daily Sins.

Chivalrous Manhood

If, says C. S. Lewis, we want to understand the old notion of what it means to be 'chivalrous' (or what we would say today it looks like for us men to man up),

"we cannot do better than turn to the words addressed to the greatest of all the imaginary knights in Malory's Morte Darthur. 'Thou wert the meekest man,' says Sir Ector to the dead Launcelot. 'Thou wert the meekest man that ever ate in the hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest."

"The important thing about this ideal is, of course, the double demand it makes on human nature. The knight is a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-off limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth."

--C. S. Lewis, 'The Necessity of Chivalry,' in Present Concerns (Fount 1986), 13

Blind Spots and Lane Changes

By Thabiti Anyabwile

Nearly every driver has had the experience. You look in your rear view and side view mirrors, hit the signal, and begin to drift into the next lane of traffic. Those routine procedures give you a sense of safety, so you turn your mind to the things ahead of you. Then suddenly, you hear the loud horn blast. Your heart jumps into your throat, you swing the car back into your lane, and you make apologizing motions to the driver in the car you did not see.

The problem with blind spots is you don’t see them .Blind spots make lane changes surprisingly dangerous. It happens in leadership, too. Leaders have blind spots. I know I do. We don’t often discover them until we’re making a change, adjusting course. You’re cruising along, changing lanes, and sometimes someone has to honk the horn real loud. Have you ever had that happen? I have. So, here are a couple lessons I’m learning as I lead with blind spots.

1. I have more than one blind spot. They’re on both sides. Leaders can sometimes act as if they have a good view of themselves, a solid assessment of strengths and weaknesses. But if our assessment is limited to self-perception, chances are there will be some gaping holes in what we see. So, it’s really vital to have others contribute to our assessments.

2. I really need to signal well in advance. Others are around me. They’re trying to keep speed and match movements with the pace car. Leaders have to communicate changes in direction, even changes as gradual and gentle as lane changes. Lane changes can crush other drivers. They need to know what I’m thinking and where I’m headed before I actually make the move.

3. I need to look over my shoulder. Mirrors are helpful, but alone they don’t eliminate blind spots. My driver’s ed teacher taught us to always take that backward glance over the shoulder. In leadership, looking back to find others traveling with you can help immensely. How many of us have charged hills with breakneck speed and reckless abandon only to look back and see the troops still in the camp. How do we look over our shoulders? Ask the people who follow our lead what they see that we seem not to notice. Ask them, “What are my blind spots?” “How is my leadership affecting others around me in ways I appear to overlook?”

4. I need to heed the honks. Horns are fabulous pieces of equipment. They can be loud and obnoxious (hooonk!!) and sometimes light and chimey (beep, beep). Like leaders. When it comes to blind spots, leaders need to know something about honkology, what the horns are signaling to us. Some of us live in cultures where horns are used for everything–lane changes, greetings to pedestrians, and musical accompaniment. Some of us live in countries where horns are only used in emergencies, to alert others to dangers. Interpreting horns depends on where you live and how they’re used. We have to interpret the feedback we’re getting. Is the driver simply honking to constantly communicate, or is he laying on the horn because he’s angry? Is he signaling that the lane change is okay, or is he protecting his space?

5. Finally, I need to adjust the mirrors. We know we’re heeding the honks and adjusting to reality when we adjust our mirrors. Again, mirrors alone won’t help you see everything. But they’re still useful. Leaders, we need to compensate by including the perspectives of other, growing from feedback, and expanding our view. We can’t include all the feedback at once. But the incremental adjustments of the mirrors might just widen our field of view enough to keep our lane changes safe and keep the traffic flowing with us.

Thabiti Anyabwile is Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman in the Grand Cayman Islands and a Council member with The Gospel Coalition.

The Purpose of Work

by Gene Edward Veith

"We work to have leisure, on which happiness depends." So said Aristotle, quoted by Notre Dame philosopher Gary Gutting to explain "What Work Is For" in a recent article for The New York Times. Luther countered this medieval view of work---which is coming back into style in our consumerist culture---with his doctrine of vocation.

To be sure, as Gutting says, we celebrate Labor Day by not working. We work so that we can save up money to take a vacation. We spend most our lives in the work force so that we can retire. Or as the British rock group Hard-Fi says, we are "Living for the Weekend." We work in order to not work.

For Aristotle, contemplation is the activity in which human beings reach their highest fulfillment. For that, we need leisure. In our culture today, though, most people probably do not use their leisure to contemplate the good, the true, and the beautiful. Our leisure is filled more with entertainment than contemplation.

Gutting recognizes that leisure can degenerate into idleness and boredom. We should use our leisure, he says, for "productive activity enjoyed for its own sake." Some things are good in themselves, Aristotle says. Other things are good because they lead to things that are good in themselves. For example, money has no intrinsic value---it is just dirty paper---but it is an "instrumental good" because it allows us to buy food so that we can stay alive, provide for our family, help others, and other human purposes, all of which are valuable in themselves. In Book 7 of the Politics, Aristotle argues that work is such an instrumental good.

If the "productive activity" enjoyed in leisure can be good in itself---say, writing poetry or building a birdhouse or reading a book---it would seem that similar exercises of human creativity and rationality occur in the workplace. But the distinction between intrinsic and instrumental goods is useful. What is missing, though, from Aristotle is other people.

Love and Serve

According to Luther, the purpose of every vocation is to love and serve one's neighbor. The farmer tills the ground to provide food to sustain his neighbor's life. The craftsman, the teacher, the lawyer---indeed, everyone who occupies a place in the division of labor---is providing goods and services that neighbors need. This is God's providential ordering of society. But for a Christian, the service rendered can become animated with love.

For Luther, vocation was far more than economic activity, including also our callings in our families, the church, and the culture as a whole. Each of these vocations calls us to particular neighbors whom we are to love and serve. Husbands are called to love and serve their wives, and wives are called to love and serve their neighbors. Pastors love and serve their parishioners, who love and serve each other. Rulers are to love and serve their subjects, and citizens love and serve each other for the common good.

Notice, vocation is not primarily about "serving God" for Luther. He was battling the high view of "contemplation" found in monasticism, which required the rejection of the vocations of marriage and parenthood (the vow of celibacy), the vocations of economic activity (the vow of poverty), and the vocations of citizenship (the vow of obedience, which replaced the authority of secular law with that of the church). Luther denied that "the contemplative life" of monasticism was more spiritual than "the active life" of ordinary Christians living in the world.  The problem with the former was that it tended to isolate Christians from their neighbors, at worse becoming a retreat into oneself. The monasteries claimed to serve God---indeed, to allow for salvation by works---but God in Scripture commands that we love and serve him by loving and serving our neighbors.

"God does not need our good works," Luther taught. "But our neighbor does." Our relationship with God is established solely by his grace in the atoning work of Jesus Christ. But then he sends us out into the world to live out our Christian faith in love and service to our neighbors.

Furthermore, God himself, in his providential care for his whole creation, is working through our human vocations. God gives us our daily bread by means of the farmer, the miller, and the baker. He protects us by means of lawful magistrates. He creates and cares for new human beings by means of fathers and mothers. He proclaims his Word and administers his sacraments by means of pastors. He creates beauty by means of artists and musicians.

To use Aristotelian terms, loving one's neighbor means to treat other human beings, particularly those we meet in our vocations, as intrinsic, not instrumental goods; that is, we see them as being valuable in themselves, and not just for how we can use them. This holds true for the way husbands and wives need to treat each other, and for the way a Christian business owner treats customers. Luther's neighbor-centered ethic requires self-denial---bearing the Cross, which is not just suffering but sacrificing oneself for others. Thus, wives submit (an act of self-denial) to their husbands, who "give up themselves" (an act of self-denial) for their wives---thus, in their callings embodying the relationship between Christ and the church (Ephesians 5).

What Transforms Our Work?

Gutting goes on in his essay to criticize capitalism for its view of work. Though Luther's doctrine of vocation played a major role in the rise of free market capitalism, as many scholars have shown, his focus on self-denial and service to the neighbor give it a different ethical dimension. The free market, according to the Enlightenment, is governed by individuals all pursuing their rational self-interest. Luther would no doubt recognize economic laws as part of God's ordering of creation. He would acknowledge that fallen human beings do not usually act in selfless love and service to others, but are instead motivated by selfishness and the desire to be served rather than to serve.

Nevertheless, God providentially works through vocation so as to bless others despite the sinner's evil motives. (A business owner may have selfish motivations, but unless the business meets people's needs, it will not be successful.) For the Christian, on the other hand, ordinary labor and ordinary relationships can be transfigured, as faith discerns the presence of God, who is active in the humblest of callings. Our vocations become the arena for the Christian life, where sanctification happens, the site of "faith working through love" (Galatians 5:6).

The economy can indeed be a dog-eat-dog, Darwinistic, self-obsessed struggle, which we yearn to escape---whether on a weekend, a vacation, or retirement. But even the leisure, bought at such a cost, may still keep us trapped within ourselves. The doctrine of vocation, properly understood, frees us from our sinful selves through the gospel as our love for God overflows into love for our neighbors.  Our very work becomes transformed not in its substance---Christian workers mostly perform the same tasks as non-Christian workers---but in its meaning and in its value.

Gene Edward Veith is provost and professor of literature at Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Virginia.

The Gospel and the Gender Wars

by Russell Moore (from Table Talk Magazine, October 2012)

Lewis Grizzard, the famous Atlanta newspaper columnist, wrote frequently of his ill-fated marriages, divorces, and remarriages. Eventually, he said he was going to give up on marriage altogether, that there wouldn’t be another Mrs. Grizzard. “I’m just going to find a woman who hates me and buy her a house,” he quipped. Grizzard’s lament elicited laughter, despite the obvious tragedy of his relational life, because it rang true to an American culture increasingly rife with gender wars. The universal tensions between men and women sometimes show up in their most innocuous form in jokes from women about men who fail to clean up after themselves around the house, or f rom men about women who can’t remember to keep their cell phones turned on. But the gender tensions run into much darker territory.

The divorce culture around us is the most obvious sign of men and women in conflict with one another, as marriages are ripped asunder and the custody of children fought over in law courts in virtually every major city on the planet. Even beyond that, many reverberations of the sexual revolution are built on self-protecting mechanisms for men and women who, at best, don’t trust one another and, at worst, want to exploit one another. Divorce courts and abortion clinics, porn sites and chick flicks— these all reveal men and women who, far from merging into some sort of unisex utopia, find it impossible to give themselves fully to the other.

That’s what the biblical concept of manhood and womanhood is about. The biblical notion of certain creational distinctives of what it means to be a man or a woman isn’t really about “who’s in charge,” and it certainly isn’t about “who’s the best.” King Jesus dismisses such categories— though common in our commercial, corporate, and athletic spheres—in favor of a newer sense of servantdominion in His kingdom.

The chief analogy used for the male/ female relationship—specifically in terms of the marital one-flesh union—is that of head and body. This is because, the Bible maintains, we are not genderless persons who happen to have been placed in arbitrary male and female bodies. Sexual differentiation isn’t simply a matter of genital architecture. From the very beginning, Scripture teaches, humanity is created “male and female” (Gen. 1:27; Mark 10:6).

Sometimes Christians will argue that male/female distinctions are obliterated by the new covenant. Doesn’t the Apostle Paul tell us that there is neither “male nor female” in Christ (Gal. 3:28)? Certainly, in terms of inheritance, there is no distinction. Men and women alike— not just firstborn sons—share in Jesus’ identity and, thus, in His inheritance of the universe. But Scripture doesn’t teach that this differentiation is in every way gone—in fact, the Bible directly applies some aspects of God’s commands to men and some to women. Masculinity and femininity are not aspects of the fallen order to be overcome; they are instead part of what God declared from the beginning to be “very good” (Gen. 1:31).

In fact, the mystery of the gospel explains to us why it is that Adam wasn’t designed to subdivide like an amoeba, why he needed someone like him and yet different from him, why he was to join himself to her in an organic union. It’s because the head/body union of a man and a woman is itself an illustration— one that points to something older and more beautiful: the union of Christ and His church in the gospel.

A man, then, is to lead his family. But this is not some sort of tyranny. A man’s leadership is modeled after Christ’s leadership of His church. He leads by discerning the best interests of his family and pouring himself out for them. This headship is self-sacrificial. A wife submits to her husband’s leadership not as a cowering supplicant but in the way the church submits to Christ. Jesus says of His church, in its original twelve foundation stones, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).

When we call husbands to lead their families, and when we call wives to respect such leadership (which, like every form of leadership, has biblical limits), we are not speaking of a business model or a corporate flow chart. We’re speaking instead of an organic unity. The more a husband and wife are sanctified together in the Word, the more they—like your nervous system and body—move and operate smoothly, effortlessly, holistically. They are oneflesh. It’s about cooperation through complementarity.

When Jesus carried out His gospel mission, the satanic powers sought to tempt the church to carry out the mission given to Christ (Matt. 16:22–23; 26:51–52), and sought to tempt Christ to seek His own provision rather than that for His bride (4:2–4). Jesus, though, set His face like flint toward the Place of the Skull, and the church eventually, by God’s grace, yielded to being served by the washing of water (Eph. 5:26).

The church continually works to reclaim a biblical concept of the family. We call men to prepare themselves to be other-directed husbands. We call on women to find their beauty not in cultural stereotypes of a woman’s value but in God’s delight (1 Peter 3:1–6). Such will look increasingly and, oddly, peaceful to a culture conditioned to gender wars. But in the end, it’s not about being better men and women. It’s about a clear proclamation of the mystery of Christ and His church. They’re not in tension with one another, in competition with one another, mistrusting one another. They’re head and body—one flesh.

Russell D. Moore serves as Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is the author of several books, including Tempted and Tried. 

The Man at the Bottom

Contrary to popular belief, Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is about bad people coping with their failure to be good. That is to say, Christianity concerns the gospel, which is nothing more or less than the good news that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Tim. 1:15). “[Christ] was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). The gospel is a proclamation that always addresses sinners and sufferers directly (i.e., you and me).

The prevailing view in much of contemporary Christianity is more subjective. It tends to be far more focused on the happiness and moral performance of the Christian than the object of faith, Christ Himself.

Think about it: How often have you heard the gospel equated with a positive change in a believer’s life? “I used to __________, but then I met Jesus and now I’m ___________.” It may be unintentional, but we make a serious mistake when we reduce the good news to its results, such as patience, sobriety, and compassion, in the lives of those who have heard it. These are beautiful developments, and they should be celebrated. But they should not be confused with the gospel itself. The gospel is not a means to an end, it is an end in itself.

What happens in this scheme is the following: well-meaning Christians adopt a narrative of improvement that becomes a law (or an identity, which is often the same thing) through which we filter our experiences. The narrative can be as simple as “I was worse, but now I am better,” or as arbitrary as “I used to have a difficult relationship with my mother, but now it’s much easier.” Soon we wed our faith to these narratives, and when an experience or feeling doesn’t fit—for example, when we have a sudden outburst of anger at someone we thought we had forgiven—we deny or rationalize the behavior.

If the narrative we’ve adopted says that in order for our relationship with God to be legitimate, our life has to get better, we set up an inescapable conflict, or what social scientists call “cognitive dissonance.” When our view of ourselves is at risk, honesty is always the first casualty. That is, when the gospel is twisted into a moral improvement scheme, (self-)deception is the foregone conclusion.

There’s a classic New Yorker cartoon of a man sitting down with a woman, having dinner, saying to her, “Look, I can’t promise I’ll change, but I can promise I’ll pretend to change.” I hope that line doesn’t characterize your church, but it does characterize more churches than you think. Instead of a hospital for sufferers, church becomes a glorified costume party, where lonely men and women tirelessly police each other’s facade of holiness. The higher up in the pecking order, the less room for weakness. Perhaps it should come as no surprise when we read headlines of pastors of legalistic churches acting out in self-destructive ways (Rom. 5:20).

God is not interested in what you think you should be or feel. He is not interested in the narrative you construct for yourself, or that others construct for you. He may even use suffering to deconstruct that narrative. Rather, He is interested in you, the you who suffers, the you who inflicts suffering on others, the you who hides, the you who has bad days (and good ones). And He meets you where you are. Jesus is not the man at the top of the stairs; He is the man at the bottom, the friend of sinners, the savior of those in need of one. Which is all of us, all of the time.

By Tullian Tchividjian
(Excerpted from Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free, pg. 78-80)