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Knowing the Gospel as a good word for the heart with the Lord involves knowing the Gospel as a word of renewal, a word of favorable visitation from the Lord, for knowing satisfaction in grace with the Lord. The Lord provides His favor for a peculiar people, an uncommon body of believers in His Son Jesus. And God has made this favor an incarnate favor for renewing His people. Jesus’ virgin birth is the foundation for His believers’ new birth.
And God has made this favor incarnate in the context of time periods. God shows His favor to His people in seasons and days and months and years. The Gospel is a very historical Gospel. We trust in Jesus’ sacrifice as a sacrifice that took place in a specific time and place in world history for our lives, and we receive sonship, spiritual adoption in Christ, as a very real tangible and satisfactory sonship from the Lord. We taste and see that the Lord is good.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing this Gospel as a very tangible and historical and satisfactory Gospel, very real good news of the acceptable year of the Lord, for walking by grace incarnate in Christ with the Lord.
“So He came to Nazareth, where He had been brought up. And as His custom was, He went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up to read. And He was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah. And when He had opened the book, He found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty for the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.’
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. And He began to say to them, ‘Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.’ “ (Luke 4:16-21)
This show of Jesus’ incarnate ministry as the foundation for renewal and favorable visitation in the book of Luke is a great passage for New Year’s Eve. Very often we get stuck in touchy-feely resolutions about how well we want to improve our identities. Then when we don’t measure up to our own expectations, we get very depressed and disillusioned. But in Jesus we receive not an improved identity, but a whole new identity, that of a follower of Christ and a son to God, by faith in Christ. And this new identity is spoken into being by God. God provides His spoken and revealed and written Word to bring us to faith in Christ, the Word born from above and the Word born in flesh. This is grace as the foundation for renewal, and grace as the foundation for faith.
Here I enclose a word from John Calvin about renewal promised by God for Israel during Israel’s collapse into captivity by Babylon in the book of Ezekiel. Calvin comments on the prophet Ezekiel’s call by God into the prophetic ministry, Ezekiel’s own transformation and renewal from the visiting power of God in the midst of Ezekiel’s own captivity. And Calvin points out this passage of Ezekiel as a foundation for renewal for the visible church, based on the idea of Jubilee, over and against Bible critics.
” ‘Now it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, that the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.’
. . . [There] is no doubt that the usual method among the Jews was to begin to reckon from a Jubilee. For this was a point of starting for the future. . . . If anyone should object, that we do not read that this eighteenth year of king Josiah was the usual year in which every one returned to his own lands, and liberty was given to the slaves, and the entire restoration of the whole people took place, yet the answer is easy; although we cannot ascertain in what year the Jobel fell, it is sufficient for us to assign the Jubilee to this year, because the Jews followed the custom of numbering their years from this institution. As, then, the Greeks had their Olympiads, the Romans their Consuls, and thence their computation of annals; so also the Hebrews were accustomed to begin from the year Jobel, when they counted their years on to the next restoration . . . It is therefore probable that this was a Jubilee year – it is probable, then, that this was the Jubilee.” (Ezek. 1:1-2; John Calvin qtd. in Calvin’s Bible Commentaries: Ezekiel, Part I, trans. John King, Charleston: Forgotten Books, 2007, pp. 34-5; Lev. 25)
I will admit here that I don’t know if this aforementioned passage of Ezekiel actually and specifically refers to Jubilee, in terms of bearing Gospel-rooted wisdom in Biblical exegetics. That I will save for the “to be continued” bin in my mind. What I don’t understand now, I will understand later, in my pursuit of spiritual maturity in the Gospel with the Lord. “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this’ ” (John 13:7). Yet I trust that Calvin bore a basic desire for seeing renewal of the Gospel for the visible church in his generation. This was the heart of Calvin’s exegesis of Ezekiel. May the church of Christ receive much renewal for knowing the favorable year of the Lord in the new year.
This past weekend I watched the movie “Valkyrie,” based on one of the failed assassination attempts on Hitler in the last days of Nazi Germany during World War II. While the movie itself was okay (one of Tom Cruise’s more understated performances), there were a couple of Gospel-rooted thoughts I had about the movie that I considered worth sharing with blog readers who are debating whether to watch the movie.
First, the movie is a contemporary humanist movie, paying tribute to the ethics of one of Hitler’s closest comrades for betraying Hitler’s trust and helping to plan the assassination of Hitler, and helping to plan the overthrow of Nazi Germany. I will note here that I have no problem supporting the historical Allied pursuit of conquering Hitler and Nazi Germany in World War II, albeit for my own intention of freeing the persecuted Jews from Germany, which not all of the Allies supported (this being particularly true for Stalin). Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means upholding the justice of the divine and moral Law among sinners, in pointing to the Gospel as the justifying fulfillment of the Law, and practicing justice and civil government among sinners for bringing them to saving faith in Christ with the Lord, even if civil authorities and citizens have no interest in true justice.
” ‘Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rebuke the oppressor; defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.’ “ (Isa. 1:16-17)
The prophet Isaiah was preaching a countercultural message of justice and grace to a people who had no interest in either justice or grace. The sons of Israel and the kings of Israel had turned to perversion and injustice apart from the LORD. Isaiah’s message of justice and mercy was to turn the people of Israel back to the LORD, contrary to their own interests.
And this is the root expression of the Gospel: it is a countercultural message. How can you live in a country that does not practice justice? You live counterculturally by the Gospel with the Lord. Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means upholding the Gospel as a word of justification and counterculture for practicing mercy ministry and justice and civil government among unbelievers in secular cultures with the Lord, and pointing these unbelievers to Christ and Him crucified with the Lord. If the Allies were not entirely interested in the plight of the Jewish Holocaust, that plight has to be my interest. If the Allies were fighting simply to beat Nazi Germany, my goal has to be to address social and spiritual injustice in the culture of Germany, and the Gospel as a word of living hope for sinners. I have no problem upholding the Allied crusade against Nazi Germany out of concern for the persecuted Jews, in terms of my upholding of the Law and the Gospel with the Lord.
However, regarding the movie “Valkyrie,” I do have a problem with the ideology of humanism as it is expressed in the movie and among new modern people today. Humanism, especially as it is practiced today, is the worship of man – giving praise to man for all his perceived potential. And in the case of the movie “Valkyrie,” one thing you’ll hear over and over again is how principles were the keys to removing Hitler from power. But in reality, principles were what put Hitler into power in the first place. Hitler legally ascended into political office by the will and approval of the German people.
The Gospel speaks a better word than humanism. The Gospel points out that the humanist outlook on life is flawed to the bondage of idolatry; we worship human identity as a substitute god apart from the true God. This is what Hitler and his contemporary Stalin became famous for; they removed religious artifacts – not just Christendom artifacts, but also Jewish artifacts – from people’s homes and demanded that they pay homage to portraits of their dictators instead. Humanism paints a revisionist picture of Hitler’s reign in “Valkyrie”: here the dictator is a lion in winter, still fighting to maintain his office and his pride, but one of his most trusted comrades has turned to German patriotism, defending the mother country by attempting to take out Hitler.
This turncoat story may turn out to be largely true. The movie is claimed to be based on a true story, and there were several assassination attempts on Hitler, one of which was famously supported by the underground church theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Yet the humanism that is portrayed in “Valkyrie” is just as bad as the humanism that brought Hitler into power. The revisionist sentiment in the movie is very typical of the new modernism emerging in American and Western culture: people adopt the scientific progressivism of their modernistic forebears, while subtracting the horrors of the modernist time period, especially the chemical warfare and genocidal atrocities of World War II.
We say we have learned our lessons, and have better morals than the anti-dogma complaints and false freedom movements of our postmodernistic forebears. And we will move forward with our high rationale and scientific progress while leaving old Christendom and old Europe and America behind. Bonhoeffer was right: we are a world come of age, in which religion is no longer deemed necessary to our optimistic outlook on life.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing the Gospel as a better word than humanism, and humbling the personal life to address the Gospel onto the lives of humanistic people in bringing them to saving faith in Christ’s covering for their sins with the Lord.
“And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!’ But He said, ‘More blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’ “ (Luke 11:27-28)
I would say to moviegoers: If you’re going to see the movie “Valkyrie,” be prepared to talk about the humanistic elements and revisionism that run rampant throughout the movie. The movie really pays high tribute to the notions of ethics and principles that many neo-modern people fall in love with and enslave themselves to. If you talk to moviegoers about the humanism of the movie and Jesus’ covering of their sins as the foundation for real faith, you will probably get many rejections, but also people interested in the authenticity of Christ for their future acceptance of Him.
And the second thought I have about the movie “Valkyrie” is that the movie tends to emphasize political revolution and visionary thinking as the keys to improving the social ills of society, as in the movie characters’ dealings with the bleak regime in Germany. The idealists and optimists in the story of “Valkyrie” really believe that their political and militant overthrow of Germany will help the country turn the corner. They’ve identified the problem; Germany has hit ground zero with Hitler, and allowing him to power was a mistake. Removing the problem will ignite the counterrevolution that brings about peace and prosperity for Germany.
But the Gospel says that a real problem exists within this argument for utopian counterrevolution and idealistic transformation of politics: We assume that we can safely justify ourselves in the reinvention of ethics. And really, we “presume” self-justification for our lives; we have inward biases about our identities that get expressed as external biases and external words of political overthrows or propaganda. Our self-gratification is so bad that we spend our whole lives defending our idols in self-righteousness, from life onto death. This is the bleak undertone of unjust society, and unjust war.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing the Gospel as real justification over false justification, the self-justification of sinners, and recognizing with the Lord that the self-justification of sinners will often lead sinners to express outward words of unjust wars and highly idealistic and destructive ideologies and propaganda. And knowing the Gospel as a new word of justification with the Lord means upholding the divine and moral Law as a Law mediated by the priestly grace of Christ alone, and practicing social justice and civil government among sinners for bringing them to saving knowledge of Christ with the Lord. And upholding the Law and the Gospel with the Lord will often have to involve suffering under unjust wars and practicing just war as a war of self-defense for one’s home nation against invasive and accusatory sinners of outer nations, for pointing these sinners to justice from the Lord and justification in Christ for their lives with the Lord, and for protecting fellow citizens of one’s home country to shelter and mercy ministries of the Gospel with the Lord.
” ‘When you go out to battle against your enemies, and see horses and chariots and people more numerous than you, do not be afraid of them; for the LORD your God is with you, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. So it shall be, when you are on the verge of battle, that the priest shall approach and speak to the people. And he shall say to them, ‘Hear, O Israel. Today you are on the verge of battle against your enemies. Do not let your heart faint, do not be afraid, and do not tremble or be terrified because of them; for the LORD your God is He who goes with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.’
Then the officers shall speak to the people, saying, ‘What man is there who has built a new house and has not dedicated it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man dedicate it. Also what man is there who has planted a vineyard and has not eaten of it? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man eat of it. And what man is there who is betrothed to a woman and has not married her? Let him go and return to his house, lest he die in the battle and another man marry her.’ ‘ “ (Deut. 20:1-7)
When Moses commands the priest to speak on behalf of the soldiers of Israel, Moses is saying that they cannot fight on their own. Their merits would lead to their own slaughter, not simply against their enemies, but from the LORD Himself. And Moses was directing the Israelites to see that their enemies’ cause was not simply invasion of the community of Israel for removing them as a threat. The enemies’ real cause was fighting against the LORD. When sinners fight against a country in an offensive projection of war, they are doing this to plunder idols for themselves. And Moses is saying to the Israelites that the battle belongs to the LORD, not to the Israelites, nor to their enemies, and that the LORD Himself will provide shelter and mercy ministries for the Israelites, even in their own households, during the intensity of battle.
Just war is a war handled by a very sober understanding of the mediating, priestly grace of Christ for sinners, and is a war handled as self-defense against attacking nations. Just war is a war that recognizes that other nations will attack our own home nations. People live as fallen creatures from the sin of Adam and Eve. War is often an expression of that fallenness.
But just war also recognizes humility in Christ before humanistic honor. Knowing the Gospel as the justification of Christ for believers with the Lord involves bearing humility in Christ to suffer from the accusations and attacks of unbelievers, whether in simple words or in military attacks of unjust wars, with the Lord, all for knowing the Lord as the Christian’s true home and true Father. And knowing the Gospel as a just word and justifying word for believers with the Lord involves learning to tolerate war only on self-defensive terms for keeping fellow citizens of one’s home country safe from harm of outside attacks, and recognizing these outside attacks as the real expressions of men fallen from Adam with the Lord, all for upholding the Law and the Gospel among outwardly attacking unbelievers and sheltered “home base” unbelievers with the Lord.
And learning to uphold the Gospel as the expert foundation and justifying word for the personal life with the Lord involves learning to suffer loss of all things of this world, especially from self-righteous and self-protective accusations of unbelievers, and learning to practice mercy ministry among unbelievers and untainted faith of the Gospel for preaching this Gospel as real countercultural grace among fallen cultures with the Lord, and learning to live beyond one’s comfort zone and home culture for preaching the Gospel among foreign cultures with the Lord. Modern day humanists may look at the argument for just war and the problem of the Jewish Holocaust and remark, “Well, what about the Jews? They weren’t living in America; they were living in Germany. What right do we have to fight Germany when these people weren’t our own?” But that remark is rooted in idolatrous self-protectionism. We live to massive self-gratification and idolatry apart from the Lord, and one visible feature of that fallen lifestyle is fragmentation of human relationships and social relationships. We fight for our own territories to secure our own happiness apart from God and apart from neighbors.
But living out the faith of the Gospel with the Lord involves suffering losses of these self-made territories, the life of repentance and justifying faith in Christ, and suffering social alienation from self-righteous unbelievers for the sake of knowing one to one happiness with the Lord alone as the Christian’s true home and true joy. And you learn to live a life of others-oriented, ironic joy. Who really feels good about giving themselves selflessly to others? There is an inherent complaint we raise about that philanthropy; either we’re too hypocritical or we’re trying to get something out of that relationship. But in the Gospel, we give up touchy-feely idols and fragmentation against other people and we receive God as our true satisfaction. And we learn to live outside our comfort zones to practice the Gospel in mercy ministry and untainted faith, a faith that lives freely from enslaving idols of the world, in showing this Gospel as real counterculture to people.
Knowing the Gospel as a good word for sinners, and for the personal sinful life, with the Lord involves knowing the Gospel as the foundation for untainted faith, a faith that lives free from idols, and applying this faith onto the personal life in living freely beyond the confines of touchy-feely, enslaving idols of this world, and learning to apply others-oriented mercy ministries of the Gospel among people fractured by dysfunctional social relationships and bad idolatry in bringing these people to new faith in Christ with the Lord.
“If anyone among you thinks he is religious, and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one’s religion is useless. Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:26-27)
The apostolic author James is writing to Jewish Christians who have been pushed out and persecuted by unbelieving Jews away from the confines and comfort zones of Jerusalem, and into the broader post-Jewish territories of imperial Rome. Here the Christians would have to learn to practice untainted faith of the Gospel among surroundings that were mixed with Jewish heritage and Gentile liberalism.
The Gospel is not the same as religion. Humanists may complain about ethics, simply because they want to glorify ethics and not the true God. But the Gospel is not the life of ethics and religion. It is the message of God extending Himself as the Father of the fatherless for believers. Living the life of the Gospel with the Lord involves knowing and applying real freedom of the Gospel onto the personal life away from the confines of idols of the world with the Lord, and learning to point socially fractured people to the God who is the Father of the fatherless, the God of the Gospel, in bringing these people to saving faith in Christ with the Lord.
And so the Gospel makes a division within the humanists’ argument: the Gospel distinguishes between justifying grace and religion and ethics. Humanists say that life is about religion and ethics, and accuse the Gospel of hypocrisy (and really accuse God of hypocrisy). They say you can’t fight a just war to protect your own people, and then go off to fight a war to free another people. They say that’s hypocrisy. But the Gospel exposes the inner motive for humanists to say this: What they’re really saying is that you can’t glorify God and lose yourself in the process. Human hypocrisy shines through the moment religion is brought to the forefront.
But the Gospel says you can have it both ways, both glorifying God and losing yourself, because the sacrifice of Jesus is to the glory of God for believers. You lose yourself, and receive satisfaction in Christ alone for your heart. Your identity is sealed in Christ’s name by faith. When God looks at you, He sees His Son Jesus, and He is pleased with your identity; He has received you as a son or a daughter through His divine and incarnate Son, the real reality of the doctrine of adoption in Christ. And you come to sing new songs of praise out of the foundation of Christ, out of your own heart satisfied by Christ, onto the Lord.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means putting away false desires for earthly inheritances and material idols for knowing satisfaction in Christ alone with the Lord, for singing personal praises out of the foundation of Christ onto the Lord, and for moving oneself into a personal walk by the foundation of Christ testified in Scripture with the Lord. “Only to the tribe of Levi he had given no inheritance; the sacrifices of the LORD God of Israel made by fire are their inheritance, as He said to them” (Josh. 13:14). The greatest joy for Israel, and really the true joy for Israel, was offering worship to the LORD. When Israel lusted after material idols and earthly inheritance idols, they lost sight of the LORD. But the LORD designates the sons of Levi as the priestly foundation for the worship life of Israel; they are to lose their earthly inheritances for receiving God alone as their inheritance by faith, and they are to sing out of the foundation of priestly grace onto the LORD.
The Gospel says you can have it both ways of glorifying God and losing personal hypocrisy in Christ. The Gospel says you have a new freedom in Christ by faith, that you can lose personal reputation and personal relationships among people, these touchy-feely idolized relationships, for the sake of satisfaction in Christ alone. And the Gospel says that you receive a new freedom in Christ by faith to care for people without the bondage of hypocrisy. Regarding the issue of war, based on the aforementioned passage of Isaiah, you can fight for your country beyond the false motives of your military commanders and political authorities, in looking to practice civil government and justice and mercy at the local level of your own life in taking care of persecuted people by the mercy ministry of the Gospel. If your leaders harbor false interests in themselves, you treasure true interest in the love of God for your expression of love to others.
Based on the aforementioned passage of Deuteronomy, you can also fight for your home culture in a humble Christ-centered way of defending your home culture and protecting your fellow citizens and neighbors from harm, even if your civil authorities harbor self-glorifying thoughts about the war. And based on the aforementioned passage of James, you can suffer to the false motives of your military commanders and political authorities in your own country, in looking to take care of persecuted people in other countries by the mercy ministry of the Gospel, even where commanders and political authorities overlook them. This is one of the great themes of the epistle of James: Mercy triumphs over judgment.
And ultimately the Gospel says that you can lose your sense of identity in a country, and lose even your own life, for receiving God alone as your true home and your true Heavenly Father, and you can exercise this new freedom in Christ to serve other people by a new others-oriented mindset without the bondage of touchy-feely material idols and dysfunctional human relationships. This is the priestly spirituality of the aforementioned passage of Joshua. And this also exposes the true anathema of contemporary humanists. They argue, “If I can’t glorify myself and protect my own interests, what is my life worth fighting for?” And in that regard, neo-modern people would have more in common with postmodern people than they would care to admit.
And so I look at the characters of “Valkyrie” based on the aforementioned passages of Isaiah, Deuteronomy, James, and Joshua, and I wonder: Do they really understand that their merits are worthy of being slaughtered? Do they really understand that their principles themselves have fallen from God? Many neo-modern people would look at the argument for principles in “Valkyrie” and conclude that a truly ethical political movement can stand on solid ground in human merit. This is an impossible dream rooted in the praises of man – the words of humanism.
If the freedom fighters of “Valkyrie” were really rooted in sound principles, why risk overthrowing Hitler before the Allies’ arrival? Is saving face for Germany too much to let go of? Is this world too strongly upheld as a safe home for the movie characters? If they had let go of trying to save Germany’s reputation, they would have had time to tend to the persecuted Jews, and shelter them from the unjust words and tactics of the Nazis. Neo-modern people do not understand these things. It is because they are in bondage to the fall of Adam, much like the Nazis and their modernistic contemporaries.
And so I would say to prospective attendees to “Valkyrie”: Before you watch the movie, understand that the movie speaks to the spirit of the age and the new emerging mindset of people – the spirit and the mindset of highly valued humanistic principles. These idolized principles are the touchstones for articulating and defending political revolution and counterrevolution and utopian reinvention of government and ethics. This is the case for the story of “Valkyrie.” This will often be the case for neo-moderns as they look to civil government as an active support system for addressing social justice issues in American culture and foreign cultures. If you understand the false desires for human principles and the justifying grace of the Gospel for your lives, you will have to address audiences that will watch “Valkyrie” to buttress their own humanistic beliefs, by pointing these audiences to the priestly grace of Christ for their lives, and by pointing them to the Gospel as a real counterculture for fallen human cultures.
One thing I love about hymn singing in the Bible is that hymn singing is directly connected with one of the most crucial aspects of Jesus’ incarnate ministry: Jesus’ building up of His disciples with the Lord’s Supper, and Jesus’ preparing them for His death that would speak for the nations. Singing hymns to the Lord involves bringing the personal voice to singing of new songs of personal praise out of the foundation of Christ and Him crucified onto the Lord. And particularly regarding hymns, singing of hymns to the Lord involves making use of pastors’ songs of praise out of the foundation of Christ for singing these songs together with pastors in the name of Christ onto the Lord, in partaking the Lord’s Supper together with pastors in corporate grace-rooted relationship with the Lord.
And singing new songs of praise out of the foundation of Christ to the Lord, and supporting pastors to this great cause in their administering of the Lord’s Supper, in a personal walk by grace with the Lord involves seeing these hymns as new words of evangelism out of the Gospel foundation with the Lord. The Lord wants His Gospel sung to the nations. The Lord had His Son Jesus prepare His disciples as future pastors for preaching the good news, the Gospel, onto the nations through the disciples’ participation in the Lord’s Supper, in Jesus’ preparation of His disciples for His death at the cross as the centerpiece for the nations. Jesus’ perfect divine and human ministry, His virgin birth and perfect obedience, were centered onto the cross for bringing in elect believers in His name from the ends of the earth, even as the Gospel would be preached by His apostles.
“And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’
Then He took the cup and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, ‘Drink from it, all of you. For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say to you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it new with you in My Father’s kingdom.’
And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.’ “ (Matt. 26:26-30)
When Jesus goes out with His disciples to the Mount of Olives after the Lord’s Supper, Jesus is signifying His future death through the mountain. Jesus would be pressed to the wrath of God before the nations. And Jesus’ singing of a hymn with His disciples would signify the nature of Jesus’ death as the atonement for believers: Jesus’ death would be His expression of praise onto God on behalf of His believers. Jesus offered Himself up as the Mediator of worship for His believers. Wherever they preach the Gospel, there He would wash their guilty stains away by His one death on their behalf.
This makes the Gospel that the disciples would preach to be authentic good news for sinners, wherever this message is heard by unbelievers, from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. If Jesus washes His believers’ guilty stains away, then He can wash their own guilty stains away – Jesus’ grace as the foundation for their faith. Singing hymns to the Lord involves bringing the personal voice to offering of new songs out of the foundation of atonement in Jesus onto the Lord, and partaking the Lord’s Supper in the name of Christ with the Lord, and joining with pastors in sharing the good news, the Gospel message, among Jewish unbelievers and Gentile unbelievers in bringing them to saving faith in Christ with the Lord, from the ends of the earth.
This topic of hymn singing and the Lord’s Supper is a very appropriate topic for Christmas. If I celebrate Christmas on my own merits, wanting nothing to do with Christ but singing my own songs to the tune of my own ears, and whispering sweet nothings into other people’s ears, I will be singing as a lost soul. But in knowing Christ as my legal Advocate and the atoning grace for my life with the Lord, I want to offer new songs of praise out of the foundation of Christ onto the Lord, and join with my pastor and my home church in telling the good news onto unbelievers’ hearts in my walk with the Lord. And I want to partake the Lord’s Supper in the name of Christ, in remembering Christ as the legal Advocate and substitutionary atonement for believers from the nations, in my walk with the Lord.
In closing, here are excerpts from my favorite Christmas hymn, a hymn on the virgin birth of Christ, the beginning of the substitutionary atonement of Christ: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” May it bring many unbelievers to saving knowledge of the crucified and risen Christ, His perfect ministry in the flesh for their lives.
“O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear!
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
From depths of Hell Thy people save,
And give them victory o’er the grave.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
O come, Desire of Nations, bind
In one the hearts of all mankind;
Bid Thou our sad divisions cease,
And be Thyself our King of peace.
Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to Thee, O Israel.”
(“Emmanuel” qtd. in Cyber Hymnal, Dec. 1, 2008)
Knowing the Gospel as a glorious message of Christ crucified and risen from the dead for the personal life with the Lord involves knowing Jesus’ birth as a virgin birth rooted in the righteousness of God, and not the righteousness of man, in knowing new grace-rooted relationship by the foundation of Jesus with the Lord. When Jesus was born, He was born in an environment of extreme political tensions. Caesar Augustus had demanded a census to be taken of all his empire, including captive Israel. Augustus’ words were an open challenge against the God of Israel. No king could pronounce a census on his own merit apart from God. David, the greatest king of Israel, was rebuked for such an attempt. So when Augustus pronounced the census to be taken of all subjects, including the captive Jews, he was purposely looking to impose his will on the Jews.
These were things Joseph kept in mind while registering in the city of David, Bethlehem. And when it came time for Jesus to be born, Mary, who had already suffered much ridicule from the Jews about her pre-marital pregnancy, would give birth to Jesus in the only space that was available, a little manger. Jesus’ virgin birth occurred in the context of alien righteousness, that righteousness born from God above and that righteousness alienated by sinful men, and in the context of major political divisions between the Jews and the Gentile Romans.
“And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census took first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to get registered, everyone to his own city.
Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:1-7)
Jesus’ virgin birth was hardly noticeable to anyone holding a grudge about the plight of Israel, or who waged war with their morals about Mary’s pregnancy, even though the nature of the birth of Jesus was recorded to the Jews by the prophet Isaiah. ” ‘Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel’ “ (Isa. 7:14). The cross of Jesus, the focal point of His ministry in Israel, cannot be divided from the nature of His birth. Jesus had to be pure born, without any sin; He had to be God born in human flesh. If this is not the case, He is an imperfect Redeemer, and insufficient for our faith.
The righteousness of man, our boasting of merits apart from God, would declare this insufficiency of Jesus to be true. But the righteousness of God, shown in a saving way by the written Word from God declaring the virgin birth of God, even Jesus Christ, has made the virgin righteousness of Jesus real and testified for believers. This was made plain to the shepherds in the countryside of Bethlehem, the shepherds who were led by angels to seek the baby Jesus.
“Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. Then the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you: you will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.’
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’
So it was when the angels had gone away from them into Heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.’ “ (Luke 2:8-15)
The shepherds of Bethlehem were not looking for a Messiah. Any non-religious skeptic could relate with that position. But the glory of the Lord, the Holy Spirit, and the announcement of the angels would make it clear to the shepherds that the virgin born Messiah was real, and would be found. Knowing the testimony of Jesus as the virgin born and perfect Redeemer, God the Son, crucified for believers’ sins for personal relationship with the Lord means knowing this relationship with the Lord as a grace-rooted relationship, grace the foundation for faith, in knowing real rest and sonship by the foundation of Jesus with the Lord, God the Father.
But why would there be any fanfare over Jesus’ virgin birth in the manger, if no one was humble enough to notice it?
“Why should there be a miraculous announcement at all, and why should it be to these shepherds? It seems to have had no effect beyond a narrow circle and for a time. It was apparently utterly forgotten when, thirty years after, the carpenter’s Son began His ministry. Could such an event have passed from memory, and left no ripple on the surface? Does not the resultlessness cast suspicion on the truthfulness of the narrative? . . . Joseph and Mary were strangers to Bethlehem. Christ never visited it, so far as we know. The fading of an impression cannot be called strange, for it accords with natural tendencies; but the record of so great an event, which was entirely ineffectual as regards future acceptance of Christ’s claims, it is so unlike legend that it vouches for the truth of the narrative. An apparent stumbling-block is left, because the story is true.
Why then, the announcement at all, since it was of so little use? Because it was of some; but still more, because it was fitting that such angel voices should attend such an event, whether men gave heed to them or not; and because, recorded, their song has helped a world understand the nature and meaning of that birth. The glory died off the hillside quickly; and the music of the song scarcely lingered longer in the ears of its first hearers; but its notes echo still in all lands, and every generation turns to them with wonder and hope.” (Alexander MacLaren qtd. in Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Luke, Charleston: BiblioBazaar, 2007, p. 40)
I write here about one of the more misunderstood and controversial lessons of the Bible: Jesus’ command for His disciples to hate their mother and father and brother and such for the sake of following Jesus. Knowing the Gospel as a true foundation for the personal life and knowing one to one relationship with the Lord involves seeing Jesus’ character, His perfect obedience and righteousness, as a substitutionary character for believers, in making the great exchange of personal character for Jesus’ character at the cross of Jesus, the atoning grace of Jesus, for knowing new grace-rooted relationship with the Lord. And particularly, knowing the Gospel as a new and true foundation for the personal life with the Lord involves hating personal character in shunning personal character away from personal preference for the sake of knowing Jesus’ character for the personal life, and shunning parents’ character for knowing Jesus’ character, in seeking satisfaction in one to one relationship with the Lord alone, the Father of the fatherless, and the Father of His believers.
This hatred of character, particularly our parents’ character, is very conflicting for people. We don’t like giving up our touchy-feely relationships deeply invested in people, especially our family members. Our humanism is deeply rooted in idolatry; we substitute our parents and our family members, and ultimately ourselves, in place of God. And knowing Jesus’ substitutionary character, Jesus’ substitutionary speech of commanding His believers, and Jesus’ substitutionary obedience for His believers, for the personal life with the Lord involves seeing the offensiveness of personal character by study of Scripture with the Lord, and learning to get angry in shunning and hating personal character for the sake of knowing Jesus’ character, the great exchange of the life of justifying faith, in one to one grace-rooted relationship with the Lord.
“Now great multitudes went with Him. And he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father or mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.’ “ (Luke 14:25-26)
Here Jesus is telling His following audience, and effectively His inner circle of disciples, that their parents’ character and their family members’ character, and especially the disciples’ character as influenced by their parents and family members, is useless. Jesus is directing His disciples to measure their own abiding with Him by their shunning of their own character, and their families’ character, for Jesus’ character.
The context of Jesus’ command is Jesus’ earlier warning to His disciples about the Pharisees, the pillars of the Jewish community, and their idolatrous and self-righteous influence on the lay members of the synagogues and the temple of Jerusalem. The Pharisees were commanding their disciples to walk in the way the Pharisees walked, in terms of acting aggressively and competitively against their neighbors for getting the best theological positions in Israel. The Pharisees’ leadership over their disciples took on a sense of father and son bonding. What the fathers did, the sons would do too. And Jesus called these disciples the leaven of the Pharisees, as these disciples were pushing and shoving their way to get good seats in Jesus’ audience.
“In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together, so that they trampled one another, He began to say to His disciples first of all, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.’ “ (Luke 12:1-2)
Jesus is warning His followers to beware the deadly mold of the Pharisees, the disciples who pushed and shoved their way to Jesus. What the Pharisees did, their disciples did. And this was a spiritual sickness that was gaining in the body of worshippers at Jerusalem. Jesus is warning His disciples to be contrary to that sickness. Jesus’ warning informs His direction to His disciples about hatred: They are to shun their own leaven for Jesus’ true and better righteousness.
I find Jesus’ command of hatred to be a very important foundation for addressing humanism in my own life, and in the church, in my walk by grace with the Lord, and especially for this Christmas season. Very often, I make false gods and false saviors out of my social relationships, regarding my family members, my friends, and the church. And I cave in to people’s expectations of me, in terms of wanting people’s good opinions of me and wanting to be a good boy just like my parents wanted. And my walk by the faith of the Gospel, the life of justifying faith, with the Lord has to involve my getting angry at my own character, in shunning my character to the cross of Christ and seeking His character for knowing satisfaction in atoning grace with the Lord. And regarding my family members and friends, when I see them trying to mold me by their humanistic expectations, my response to them has to consist of getting mad at their false character in pointing them to the substitutionary character of Jesus and Him crucified for their lives in my walk with the Lord.
This is a very difficult and controversial approach to my life, and to evangelism. Very often Christians want to think of evangelists as super nice and easygoing, people-friendly seekers of lost souls. We don’t want to think of them as temperamental, controversial, or divisive. Yet Jesus’ command speaks directly to His believers’ hearts. We idolize our social relationships; we’re in bondage to what people think. And when we live by this captivity, the reality is that the Gospel is not communicated to lost sinners. In our overzealous emphasis on love, we actually take love itself and turn it into a functional god and functional savior apart from God Himself. His character is thrown by the wayside. Knowing the Gospel as the true word of evangelism for unbelievers with the Lord involves pointing people away from personal character, in shunning personal character to the cross of Christ, and pointing these people to the substitutionary atonement of Jesus, His perfect guilt-washing character for His believers, and bringing the aforementioned people to a new encounter of justifying faith in Christ with the Lord.
And I find that Jesus’ command of hatred is a very controversial command for the life of the church itself. Why hate anything? Aren’t we supposed to be a people of love? Isn’t that what the Christmas season is about? Very often we Christians surround ourselves with all sorts of artificial good cheer with lavish ornaments and highly socialized parties and very sophisticated Christmas memorials (Advent memorials?) in our worship services. But in building up the spiritual health of the church in the grace of Christ alone with the Lord, I would have to say that very often we turn these festivities into our substitute gods and our substitute saviors. We cover up our rude and crude tendencies of the flesh with super extreme niceties. And when that happens, we don’t effectively communicate the Gospel at all.
The Gospel is not an expert foundation for the “pretty people.” The Gospel is a good word for sinners. And in seeking the edification of the church of Christ with the Lord, I would have to say that applying the Gospel onto the spiritual life and the spiritual health of the church has to involve leading fellow Christians toward their own hatred of their character for the sake of knowing Jesus’ character, Jesus’ substitutionary character, in leading these fellow Christians to real spiritual rest and satisfaction in Christ alone with the Lord. This is how the Gospel becomes effectively communicated onto unchurched people this Christmas season.
How do you deal with disappointment, when everything seems to be not going your way? This is a question that I find myself asking during the course of my walk by the Gospel with the Lord, when I hear my heart complaining about desired plans not coming to fruition. Many times, I have come across disappointment in my life. I don’t get to exercise at particular hours that I want. I don’t get to find the soul-mate that I want. I don’t get to have the particular friends that I want. In all these plans I lay out for my life, I find my heart complaining unrighteously, setting up its own law-court and offering self-justification and self-righteousness and self-gratification, as these plans come to ruin.
And by plans, I don’t mean unlawful plans, as though I was rebelling against the Lord. Many times, I go in a direction that I think the Lord is leading me in His inscribed Word in my walk with the Lord, and these plans themselves don’t work out. And I wonder out loud why that is. Why can’t I figure out what’s going on? Or why did I have to end up like this? Many times, I curse myself, “You idiot!” because my course of action did not yield good results (at least by my own perception).
Well, a good response to those moments, that I preach onto myself as well as for others, would be this: Walking by the Gospel with the Lord involves seeking good fruits of the Gospel for the personal life, and seeking the edification of the church of Christ, with the Lord. And walking by the Gospel of grace with the Lord involves preaching the Gospel against the self-justification, the self-made law-court, of the heart in knowing one to one satisfaction and happiness with the Lord. Many times, as I want to seek the Lord’s will in my walk with the Lord, my heart will complain for self-righteousness. I’m passing from death onto life in the name of Christ, and passing from this world into the next world and the new kingdom, with the Lord, and my heart hates that. My heart screams: No, I have to have self-satisfaction here and now. And I have to preach the Gospel onto my heart with the Lord, telling my heart: No, I will find satisfaction in the death and resurrection of Jesus alone in new relationship with the Lord.
And preaching the Gospel onto oneself with the Lord also involves building up the church of Christ to the same expectation of passing from the current world to the new world in the name of Christ with the Lord, and leading fellow Christians to their own preaching onto their hearts by the Gospel of grace with the Lord, and leading these same Christians to preaching of the Gospel onto unbelievers’ hearts for winning them over to new faith in Christ with the Lord. I’m not the only Christian who complains unrighteously. Many times, other Christians will complain unrighteously that their best laid plans in seeking the Lord’s will by fasting and prayer have not met with good results, and they criticize themselves enormously. That’s a real reality of passing from this world to the next world: a whole new sense of culture shift is happening for the Christian’s life, and because he or she is so used to earthly idolatry, he or she is bound to complain hard.
And so preaching the Gospel onto oneself with the Lord involves telling the heart with the Lord that good fruits will come, and new Christians will be raised up by the Lord’s grace, and the church will be edified to spiritual wisdom, all as part of seeking these good fruits and developing these good fruits for oneself and for the church, in encouraging fellowship among Christians and adding new Christians to faith in Christ, in a personal walk by grace with the Lord. And preaching the Gospel as a good word for the stubborn heart with the Lord involves building up fellow Christians to their own preaching onto their hearts about the future grace of new Christians being raised up as born again to God’s grace and the church edified, and leading these same Christians to preaching of the truth of Christ onto non-Christians for bringing them to faith in Christ, all as part of knowing personal satisfaction in the foundation of Christ alone with the Lord, and passing out of this world into the next world in the name of Christ with the Lord.
“My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.” (1 John 3:18-21)
The apostle John is writing these words to Christians in the latter stages of the church at the end of the apostolic century and the apostolic ministry. The other apostles had died off, and the church grew beyond Jerusalem into the Gentile regions of imperial Rome, and Gentile Christians were added to the church in addition to the Jewish Christians. And the church was facing alienation from Gentile non-Christians, particularly those of social influence and high political power, forcing the church into a hidden community away from the sight of the culture of Rome.
The church was meeting in the form of house churches, having been driven from Jerusalem by the Jews and driven from prominence in Rome by the Gentile Romans. And John is writing to these Christians to have them expect to face death for the name of Christ very soon, as they were facing further persecution from false teachers who had gathered into the church from Gentile culture, and from Jewish culture, and had caused controversy among the Christians. John is writing to the Christians as one who had known Jesus personally from the beginning, as one of the apostles. And John writes to the Christians to edify their understanding about the end for their lives, about Gospel-rooted countercultural evangelism and edification of the church and expectations for the new and glorious kingdom of God beyond this world.
I believe these things of the aforementioned passage of 1 John are true for my own walk with the Lord. As I move from death onto life in the name of Christ with the Lord, my heart will complain about the culture shift, in moving from dead idols to the living God. And as I move in my walk by grace with the Lord, I have to preach onto my heart to look to future grace and good fruits of the Gospel, in my sowing of the good fruits of the Gospel in building up my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to satisfaction in Christ alone with the Lord, and in encouraging the church of Christ to preaching of the word of truth and adding new Christians to the faith with the Lord.
And as I move and live in the life of justifying faith, and the good deeds and good fruits of this justifying faith, in the name of Christ with the Lord, and as I pass from death onto life in the name of Christ with the Lord and put away my complaints to the cross of Christ with the Lord, I know that my heart’s complaints will die away, and I will receive the Lord Himself as my true home and my true Father and my true Deliverer. And these are things I pass on to fellow Christians: Keep preaching the Gospel to yourself, to your stubborn hearts, and look to edify the church of Christ to outward-facing evangelism and fraternal encouragement toward future grace.
And I pass this word onto non-Christians about the Gospel: This Gospel message is a message about life being raised from the dead, and God raising up people from bondage to sin and to death. God achieves this through His Son Jesus, and through God’s abiding witness in the Holy Spirit and the inscribed Word. Seek satisfaction in Christ alone, and recognize the law-court of your heart and its unrighteous complaints about the choice idols in your lives, based on your reading of God’s inscribed Word about your heart. You want material things and present life satisfaction apart from the true God and living God. Only if you look to Jesus alone will you find living satisfaction beyond the touchy-feely sentiments and dead fashion statements of the here and now. Dedicate your lives to satisfaction in Christ alone for your walk by grace with the Lord, and your edification of the church of Christ to their winning of lost sinners to new faith in Christ with the Lord, and your passing from death onto life in the name of Christ with the Lord.
While studying Galatians early this morning with the Lord, I got to thinking with the Lord about language and actions for evangelism, and the substitutionary active obedience of Christ as a perfect statement of grace for moralistic sinners. Here is the passage of Galatians that I studied.
“You ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. I have confidence in you, in the Lord, that you will have no other mind; but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment, whoever he is.” (Gal. 5:7-10)
The key of this passage of Galatians is this: Jesus’ perfect obedience speaks on behalf of those who trust Him. And this perfect obedience comes born from above. Jesus’ obedience comes from God. And sinners’ obedience, their moralism, is really rooted in expressed competition against God, and against the Gospel.
And so I got to thinking about two things out of this passage of Galatians with the Lord: personal language and evangelism. The first thing, I think, that has to happen for a real understanding of the Gospel is to make the great exchange of personal flesh-centered language and self-performance language for new language about Christ and Him crucified. Our words define our lives. We shape a high sense of self-performance and self-achievement and legalism through our words. And knowing the Gospel in new relationship with the Lord means putting away false words, moralistic words, to the cross of Christ and bridling the tongue by the orthodox doctrine of justification by faith alone in the Gospel message with the Lord, and learning to speak this doctrine as new language into the personal life in a personal walk with the Lord. We learn to say, “Not my obedience, but Jesus’ obedience.” His obedience speaks for us at the cross. And we learn to uphold the Bible and say, “This is about Jesus, not about me.” Not my justification, but Christ’s justification for me.
The second thing that has to happen, in my reflection on Galatians with the Lord, is that we make the great exchange of moral-centered language for Christ-centered language in our evangelism. It’s very easy to speak legal-ese to fellow sinners. That’s part of our fallen nature inherited from Adam and Eve; we take up our natural sense of right and wrong apart from God. That natural sense becomes our choice idol. And we defend that idol very heavily against God and against competitive peers. And in the context of the divine and moral Law, when we encounter that Law, and we encounter the life of the church, it’s very easy to blend in with moral-ese and legal-ese and treat that as our comfort cushion apart from God.
Once that happens, evangelism is lost. In fact, it’s replaced by false evangelism; we invite fellow sinners by our call to their obedience, their sense of morality, and they feel a high sense of home satisfaction and humanistic assessment of themselves and their peers in the church. That’s the story of the transition from postmodernity to post-postmodernity – people exchanging immorality for morality. And in fact, it’s the story for many people professing themselves as Christians, even as Reformed evangelical Christians, in the church; they transit from an immoral past to a very rigid rendition of Calvinism that has no heart in the Gospel.
But in applying the Gospel onto the heart and onto fellow sinners’ hearts with the Lord, there has to be the great exchange of moral-ese for Christocentric language. I have to say, “Not my performance, but Christ’s performance,” in pointing fellow sinners to satisfaction in Christ alone with the Lord. And that’s the way it has to work in theological circles too: I have to say, “Not my theology, but God’s gift of theology” in the inscribed Word, in using the inscribed Word to point fellow Christians to edification in Christ alone with the Lord. That is because justification by faith alone is not a doctrine made up by men; it comes from God on high. Moralism does not come from God; it comes from the flesh.
And so knowing the Gospel as the foundation for speaking new grace-rooted and God-centered, God-praising language with the Lord involves making the great exchange of putting personal foul language, personal flesh-centered and self-righteous language, to the cross of Christ and bridling the tongue by the touchstone of justification by faith alone in the Gospel with the Lord. And knowing the Gospel as a new language for the personal life with the Lord involves reforming the tongue by the Gospel to speaking new language of praise out of the foundation of Christ to the Lord, and reforming the tongue to pointing sinners to Christ and Him crucified with the Lord. This is how true evangelism flows out of the life of the church.
Another Christmas gift I would recommend to blog readers – that is, if it’s not too late already to place an expedited order with Amazon for Christmas – would be Bruce C. Daniels’ excellent sociological study on the American Puritans, Puritans at Play: Leisure and Recreation in Colonial New England (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995).
Daniels does a very good job at challenging and erasing some of the major misconceptions people have about the early American Puritans and their views on religion and happiness and building culture. Specifically, the biggest argument against the American Puritans, and the Puritans overall, has long been that they were a killjoy to the human search for happiness and pleasure in life. H. L. Mencken penned the famous quip that Puritanism was “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy” (Mencken qtd. in Daniels 3). Daniels provides some thoroughgoing analysis of Puritan writings and expository commentaries to make the case that Puritan religion and the pursuit of happiness went very well hand in hand for the Puritan shaping of early American culture.
My personal motivation for writing about the Puritans from Daniels’ book has stemmed from a long time favorite Bible passage on salvation history, Christian forebears, and confidence in the Gospel. “Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct” (Heb. 13:7-8). Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means knowing the Gospel as the foundation of a salvation history, a history of believing and very fallible Christians, as part of enjoying grace for the personal life with the Lord. God provided Christian forebears, father figures, as God’s reminder that He is the Father of His people. And God provided Christian father figures as vessels of the Word of God for bringing future generations of sinners to new faith in Christ, a picture of Jesus’ identity as the Word born in flesh preaching good news to lost sheep. Knowing the Gospel with the Lord means reading books from history about Christian father figures like the Puritans, and learning about these men as very flawed figures in the flesh and yet also figures who came to know new amazing grace in the Gospel, all for personal rejoicing in the Gospel as a good word for sinners with the Lord.
My personal favorite discovery of the Puritans from Daniels’ book was encountering new and unknown Puritans beyond some of the more recognizable and well renowned names that had circulated in Christian publications in recent years. I knew about Jonathan Edwards and John Bunyan and Thomas Watson and some of the more “brand name” Christians whom present day church people wax euphoric about as “must reads” on a plethora of topics. But I did not know about lesser known Puritans – at least to me – like Benjamin Colman and Joshua Moody, who were ministers striving to show enjoyment of the natural world and anticipation of the future new world and a future meeting with God face to face as not antagonistic opposites.
” ‘God has given us temporals to enjoy,’ [Perry] Miller quotes the minister Joshua Moody; ‘we should therefore suck the sweet of them, and so slake our thirst with them, as to not be insatiably craving after more.’ Pleasure had a useful role in Puritan cosmology; never did Puritans believe that actions were sinful merely because they were enjoyable. Moderate pleasures, as Moody instructed his congregation, prevented one from having immoderate ones. Eating, relaxing pastimes, and sexual gratification, the Puritan ministers argued, all gave refreshing pleasures that when practiced in moderation benefited the individual and thus the community.
. . . This tradition of moral rhetoric giving with one hand and taking away with the other continued into the eighteenth century. In 1707 the tradition received its most comprehensive statement in Benjamin Colman’s 170-page tract, The Government and Improvement of Mirth, According to the Laws of Christianity, in Three Sermons. Colman’s tour de force is the only book-length study devoted exclusively to the subject of leisure and recreation published in colonial New England’s history.
. . . ‘I am far from inveighing against sober mirth,’ [Colman] wrote; ‘on the contrary, I justify, applaud, and recommend it. Let it be pure and grave, serious and devout, all which it may be and yet free and cheerful.’
. . . Colman’s theoretical commitments to leisure and recreation were qualified only by a few basic restrictions: they must be ‘innocent’; ‘do no injury to God or our neighbour’; and ‘must not transgress sobriety, holiness, or charity.’ . . . Colman examines the reality of the pursuit in Sermon Two. Lurking within the innocent pastimes of ’sober mirth,’ virtuous mirth,’ and ‘profitable mirth’ are always their natural enemies, ‘carnal and vicious mirths.’ . . . In the final third of his book, Sermon Three, however, he described what he believed to be the greatest recreation of all: rejoicing in God. The worship of God was the source of true relaxation for a regenerate Christian.” (Daniels 7; 17-9)
My discovery of these lesser lights like Colman and Moody motivated me to start researching books on a whole plethora of Puritans and their Gospel-rooted examinations on all sorts of topics in life, beyond the basic “brand name” Puritans like Edwards or John Owens, as great as these theological giants were. Daniels’ book helped me to see the Puritans less as prototypes or models, but as real people.
My discovery of the lesser celebrated Puritans in Daniels’ book also motivated me to start checking out Puritan expository commentaries, their sermon-books on the canon-books of the Bible, as part of my growth in the Gospel with the Lord. I wasn’t interested as much in the familiar Puritan doctrinal tracts that were often distinguished by Puritan fans today as the only real legacy of the Puritan heritage. I wanted to read and see how the Puritan ministers treated chapters of the Bible for their sermons in Sunday worship services, and these ministers’ leading of their congregations to worship out of the foundation of Christ onto the Lord. These expository commentaries were really where I found the Puritans working the Gospel into their lives, in seeing them as very fallible men discovering great things about Christ and learning to direct their congregations to expression of great awe and wonder out of the foundation of Christ onto the Lord.
My discovery of the lesser known Puritans in Daniels’ book opened my mind to a deeper vision for the worship life that flows out of the Gospel onto the glory of the Lord. I suspect the same will hold true for other people who get to check out Daniels’ book for themselves. As people get introduced to the Puritans as real living human beings in Daniels’ book, they will want to check out all sorts of literature from the Puritans, and not just the famous tracts of the “brand name” Puritans. They will get to see the Puritans living and breathing and shaping the course of their culture, and see these men as very real flawed men with drastic shortcomings in their outlook on life, and yet also see these men as believers in the power of the Gospel message, a message that led these men to rejoice to God for His grace for their sins.
Several other highlights abound from Daniels’ book, one from the introduction, and others from the book itself. The highlight from the introduction was a curious encounter of postmodern academic treatment of the early twentieth century reassessment of the Puritan heritage by Perry Miller and other scholars. Apparently, the Puritan writings themselves could not be taken at face value. The Puritan view on pleasure could not be determined by the Puritans themselves, but rather by modern day scholars’ determination of the Puritans’ credibility in seeking religion and pleasure for their lives.
“Not until the 1960s did any major works question [Perry Miller's new view] of Puritans and pleasure or open any fresh lines of inquiry into New England society. In that decade, a group of scholars who called their work the ‘new social history’ challenged the dominance of intellectual history and did indeed open new questions, which are still being considered. The new social historians rooted their work in large samples of quantifiable data and claimed to be much more empirical – much more scientific – than their predecessors, who dealt primarily with literary evidence.
. . . In ‘The Mirror of Puritan Authority,’ an article that truly deserves to be called seminal, Darrett Rutman put the challenge to the intellectual historians point-blank: ‘Was the ideal – so often expressed by the articulate few and commented upon by the intellectual historians – ever a reality in New England?’ he asked, arguing: ‘Certainly, conditions in America were not conducive to it.’ . . . The questions Rutman asked were essentially those posed by the work of social historians for all fields of history. Was there a divergence between the rhetoric expressed in literary evidence, and the reality reflected in the daily living habits of the general public? Did the Puritan ideal impose itself upon behavior, or did behavior render the ideal irrelevant?’ . . . Questions of this type, which have been asked repeatedly in the generation of the new social history, make it painfully clear that, in presenting a warm, human Puritan who sought pleasure in moderation, the intellectual historians painted their picture with a much sharper focus than the evidence warranted. We know what some Puritan leaders said about pleasure, but we do not know what most Puritans did.
. . . At the same time that social historians began to identify some limits to the explanatory power of intellectual history, a new generation of intellectual historians began to challenge the work of Miller and others of his generation on its own terms. . . . First, the critics charge that the Miller school was so anxious to destroy the stereotype of the fanatical pleasure-hating Puritan that through gross overstatement it created a new, equally ahistorical stereotype of the Puritans as twentieth-century moderates in their views on pleasure. When scholars write ‘corrective’ history of course this type of overstatement occurs. Second, other historians argue that Miller and his generation of intellectual historians did not fully appreciate the diversity of New England thought. . . . Third, historians using insights and models from psychiatrists and psychologists suggest that the previous generation of intellectual historians failed to appreciate subconscious forces in the Puritan psyche and too readily accepted public statements at face value.
When citing examples of overstatement and dubious interpretation of evidence, not surprisingly the critics often turn to the bugaboo longest associated with the Puritans – sex. . . . The main reason (besides procreation) for recommending marital sex was to ward off worse temptations of ‘inexpressible uncleannesses.’ Puritans saw sexual snares everywhere, and in remarkably consistent language they associated ‘unrestrained sensuality’ with paganism, atheism, idolatry, and blasphemy. And, this was as true for sex within marriage as for illicit sex: ‘intemperate adventures in bed’ would lead a husband to ‘play the adulterer with his own wife.’ “ (Daniels 9-12)
I would note here that some of the attacks Daniels encountered from the postmodern scholars on Puritan orthodoxy and orthopraxis may have discouraged Daniels to some degree. This can be sensed in Daniels’ language toward the new social historians’ questions about what the Puritans did versus what they believed. Knowing the Gospel as a good word for the heart with the Lord involves providing the new joy of the Gospel as a gladdening word for fellow Christians’ hearts during very bleak times of discouragement and depression for bringing them to a more straightened walk in the name of Christ with the Lord. “Anxiety in the heart of a man causes depression, but a good word makes it glad” (Prov. 12:25). I believe Daniels to be a professing Christian, and his work on the Puritan view of pleasure is very commendable, even if Daniels did seem to get discouraged by the darts of postmodern scholars about the validity of the Puritan life, and thus the Christian life overall.
I would note a couple of things here about the postmodern assessment of the Puritan heritage and the Puritan view of pleasure with the Lord. First, it should be noted that the postmodern scholars who have attacked Puritanism and the visible church itself write from a perspective of critical observation of the church, but not from the perspective of actually being involved in the life of the church, let alone professing faith in Christ. When critics attack Christianity, they really do it from a position of not knowing God in their own lives. Knowing the Gospel as the foundation for the church and looking to get involved in the life of the church with the Lord involves having to count the cost of personal reputation and personal achievements to the cross of Christ with the Lord, and moving to serve other Christians in their edification from the Gospel in Scripture and preparing these fellow Christians for corporate witness of the Gospel to unbelievers in secular culture with the Lord.
“Then Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, do You speak this parable only to us, or to all people?’ And the Lord said, ‘Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his master will make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes.’ “ (Luke 12:41-43)
The postmodern scholars who have attacked classical Christianity, and particularly Puritanism, may believe that they offer a better ethos than that of the most strident Protestant. But in reality, the problem is that they do not know a living relationship with God in their own lives. They are actually very absent from God; they seek to replace God with substitute gods in their academic achievements and reputations. And their critical assessments of Christianity tend to reflect their substitute gods, their comfort idols. Thus I would actually recommend Daniels’ book as a valuable book for showing some of the attacks of postmodern scholars on classical Christianity and Puritanism, if the book would help serve Christians by their gaining of a better awareness of the post-Christian world and its criticisms surrounding them.
The second thing I will note here about postmodern criticism toward the Puritans is that postmoderns attack God for the sake of securing their own freedom and their own definition of human pleasure in life. Human obsession with the human image, and with human pleasure, is the bondage of the fall of man. This is certainly the case for postmoderns. Their great cause is to secure their own freedom and their own pleasure – especially their sexual pleasure – by defining God as an obsolete god, and to declare all moral standards on sexuality as taboo dogmas. This is why postmodern scholars typically hit the Puritans hard on the issue of sex. But the reality is that postmoderns create their own dogmas that exploit their own lives to a greater and more unhealthy and depraved self-obsession with their flesh.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord involves recognizing with the Lord that the fall of man has resulted in people being obsessed over their own flesh for deep sensual pleasures, and recognizing with the Lord that the Gospel message is God’s spoken grace to bring people to new rest with the Lord beyond bondage to their flesh.
“Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ So he said, ‘I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.’ And He said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded that you should not eat?’ “ (Gen. 3:9-11)
God’s dialogue with Adam shows Adam’s bias toward his flesh, a visible feature of Adam’s fallout from God. God did not care what Adam looked like. Adam did. And God’s words show that they were protective words that kept Adam from focusing on his flesh, a focus that Adam pursued apart from God and His words, resulting in Adam’s fall.
Knowing the Gospel with the Lord involves knowing the fall of man as a very real fall, and learning to address this fall as part of presenting the Gospel onto unbelievers and bringing them to new saving faith, justifying faith, in Christ alone with the Lord. Without the fall of man, the Gospel becomes a very incomplete Gospel to present. The Gospel is the fulfillment of the Law of God, the justice of God sealed upon unjust sinners; the Gospel has to remedy that Law. But if there is no sin – no real severity of sin – then the Gospel becomes irrelevant. This reveals the heart of postmodern scholarship attacking classical Christianity, and ultimately attacking God and the Gospel; postmoderns want to create their own justice systems apart from God. But knowing the Gospel with the Lord involves recognizing with the Lord that alternative justice systems of the flesh really become bondage issues of the flesh. Even personal self-made justice and self-made morality exploits you. You become a slave to your own pleasures, and your insistence on your own morals will drive the whip on your life.
In knowing this reality of the flesh and in looking to the Gospel as a good word of grace for the flesh with the Lord, I would also recommend Daniels’ book as a helpful means for talking with unchurched post-Christian postmoderns, even in academic settings like liberal arts universities, about the problem of sexual freedom and the new and different freedom that the Gospel offers. Certainly postmoderns will raise a stink about the Gospel being unfair to their own hedonism, and they may well raise up old accusations about the Puritans and sex. But Daniels’ book points out the Puritans as very humane men who struggled in the flesh, in their own self-obsession with the flesh. And Daniels’ book also points out the Puritans as believers in the crucified and risen Christ, the Word born in flesh who spoke a good word to God on behalf of His believers at the cross. So I would recommend Daniels’ book as a helpful tool for conversing with postmoderns about classical Christianity and the Gospel as a good word of grace on the fallen flesh and its obsession with false pleasures.
When it comes to the issue of real delight and pleasure for people in the Gospel message, we must not compromise on the basic foundation. The Gospel brings new joy into people’s lives, in bringing weary sinners from bleak despair and self-worship to a leaping new satisfaction in the truth of the resurrection of the dead in Christ. Knowing the Gospel as the truth of the resurrection of Christ for believers with the Lord involves communicating this power onto unbelievers’ lives, for bringing these unbelievers to a new powerful awareness and saving knowledge of the Gospel with the Lord.
“Then Peter said, ‘Silver and gold I do not have, but what I do have I give you: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.’ And he took him by the right hand and lifted him up, and immediately his feet and ankle bones received strength.” (Acts 3:6-7)
This new pleasure, this new leaping joy, of the Gospel is what the Puritans strove to demonstrate in their lives and their sermons, in not looking to material pleasures as their idols, but in looking to the risen Christ as the center of their lives.
This leads to the other highlights of Daniels’ book that I recommend to readers: the Puritans’ rejoicing in song and dance and food. Here the Puritans, while struggling to communicate the Gospel to non-believers because of struggles with self-righteousness and orthopraxis in the flesh, did learn to offer new songs in their lives out of the foundation of Christ onto the Lord. One example was the Puritans’ learning to address disputes among congregations about instrumental and vocal melody in their singing of psalms during Sunday worship services.
“The Puritans’ attitudes toward music paralleled their general attitude toward church government. As Congregationalists, New England’s Puritans dispensed with many of the governing devices – bishops, synods, presbyteries- used by Rome and other parts of Christendom to bring order, structure, and uniformity to an inherently fractious world. . . . New England relied on voluntary submission and on the leadership of the clergy and of the civil authorities to knit each local congregation into a uniform whole. Puritan theologians believed that truth did exist and God’s elect could come close to finding it without a pope, bishops, or other authoritarian bodies. In the main, time proved them wrong; New England existed amidst much religious bickering.
So, too, did Puritan attitudes toward the practice of church music fail to produce a harmonious whole. Knowledge of music declined throughout the seventeenth century: congregations forgot tunes; no training took place; and creativity was indulged only to the extent that each singer anarchistically dealt with the psalms on his or her own terms. By most accounts, the results were artistically dreadful. An obscure minister, Thomas Walter, who became a critic of the system, wrote at the end of this century of decline: ‘the tunes are now miserably tortured and twisted and quavered, in some churches, into a medley of confused and disorderly voices. Our tunes are left to the mercy of every unskillful throat to chop and alter, to twist and change. . . . [No] two men in the Congregation quaver alike or together, it sounds in the ear of a good judge like five hundred different tunes roared out at the same time with perpetual interferings with one another.’
. . . Walter and [James] Franklin added two strident voices to a chorus of critics pressing for reform in church music in the 1690s. For over sixty years, New England’s churches fought over the proposed changes. . . . The 1698 edition of The Bay Psalm Book, the first in New England’s history to include tunes, provide the first hint of change. This new edition supplied ’some directions for ordering the voice’ that were designed to help people avoid ’squeaking above or grumbling below.’
. . . The controversy over ’singing by rote or note’ – by the ‘old style’ or by a ‘regular way’ – erupted because the proposed changes became attached to and symbolic of a deeper struggle in Puritan society between a conservative, primarily rural mentality and a newly emerging, urbane, liberal one centered in the large towns. The urban clergy led the fight with a barrage of thirty-one sermons published between 1721 and 1730 that provided doctrinal justification for singing by note as well as instructions for how to do so. In 1731, a group of Boston ministers started ‘A Society for Promoting Regular Singing in the Worship of God,’ which organized a series of ’singing lectures’ – sermons on the proper singing of psalms. . . . [The] urban clergy saw singing reform as religious reform and thought that organizing music might help to restore religion to its earlier importance. Thus, many ministers thought they could use interest in music as a means of combating a perceived loss of religious zeal. Specifically, reformers argued that the new music was an act of devotion that pleased God; it was a ‘chariot’ carrying prayers to Heaven; it ’soothed unhappy emotion’; it promoted a feeling of community; it helped resist Satan by ‘fixing the mind’ on religious objects; and it helped prevent young people from giving in to ‘foolish, yea pernicious songs and ballads and . . . all such trash.’
. . . As the new style of singing psalms gradually spread to every community, it spawned two new institutions that had a profound effect on secular music: church choirs and singing schools. Members of a congregation who showed interest in singing during worship often formed a special group in order to master the tune and lead the congregation in its performance. Initially, the minister or some other local person of talent provided instruction. During the 1740s, however, a few itinerant musicians called ’singing masters’ began offering classes to instruct choirs and local singers. The singing-school movement grew slowly for a decade but in the late 1750s surged suddenly in popularity. By the 1760s, the vast majority of parishes, even remote ones with no central village, had engaged a singing teacher to conduct a singing school. Terms occasionally were as short as one week, but three-month ones were average. Held variously at churches, schools, or taverns, singing schools were oversubscribed as soon as word went out that one was about to be held. Students paid tuition and met twice a week in the evening and sometimes again on Sunday. At the end of the term, the class put on a concert, a ’singing lecture’ as it was called, that would be directed and explained by the teacher and sometimes accompanied by a sermon preached by the minister on the joys and religious purposes of music.” (Daniels 53-5; 63-4)
Here the Puritans’ transition from plain-style singing and non-directed singing toward choral singing and artistic community provides a remarkable prelude to the present day debates in the visible church over instrumental creativity and directions of worship for Sunday worship services, as well as the re-shifting of population interest from small towns to metropolitan cities from modernity to post-postmodernity. Before there was Tim Keller and the Christian arts movement and urban church-planting movement of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, and before there was an emergent church movement, there were the Puritans struggling with culture shifts and a sense of identity in their own rendition of the “worship wars” among their congregations. And in particular, the Puritans were discovering the joy of the Gospel, and the musical expression of praise to God out of the Gospel, as the foundation for the Puritans’ perseverance and their shifting to others-oriented evangelical influence in the growing urban populations and metropolitan cities of colonial America.
On a personal note, my own discovery of this Puritan movement toward choral singing and artistic community and urban residence confirmed a very favorite personal lesson from the book of Jonah about evangelism and the secular city with the Lord. Learning the Gospel as the gift of love and forgiveness and redemption from on high for the personal life with the Lord also means learning to see this gift as God’s gift for others, especially for their hardened idolatrous lives in secular cities, major metropolitan cities, and learning to plant the Gospel among these unbelievers where they are in their lives in their home cities for bringing them to new faith and new life in Christ with the Lord. “And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left – and much livestock?” (Jon. 4:11). I would recommend that blog readers buy Daniels’ book and keep Daniels’ account on the Puritan musical movement and urban movement in mind as readers encounter the worship wars of the contemporary visible church, and especially the effects of these worship wars on evangelism strategies for Christians reaching non-Christians in rural communities or major metropolitan cities.
As the Puritans were learning the new joy of the Gospel for their own lives, and for their visions for artistic community and urban outreach, their transformation by the Gospel also impacted their sense of celebration as real human beings needing real recreation in culture, especially in their offering of praise out of the foundation of Christ onto God. One example was the Puritans’ treatment of secular dancing, in which the Puritans used old folk tunes and group dances to share in Gospel-oriented community with each other.
” . . . New Englanders preferred ‘country dances’ as the folk dances they imported from England were called. These resembled modern square or contra dances and were carefully described in John Playford’s The English Dance Master (London, 1661), which was the most popular dance book in late seventeenth-century and early eighteenth-century New England. Country dances originated as folk dances in rural England but were given form and sophistication by English and French dance masters in the seventeenth century.
. . . Contra (country) dances were of three basic types: circles composed of large numbers of dancers, sometimes all those in attendance; sets for two, three, or four couples; and longways, two long lines that faced each other. . . . Dancers usually had partners, but little close or intimate physical contact took place between them. . . . Little sensual or lewd conduct could be directly attributed to circles, sets, or lines of people performing routines to music. Moreover, the group nature of these dances fit smoothly into Puritan social thought, which emphasized communal activity.
. . . Dance names often memorialized creators, events, places, or prominent dance masters; the names originated in New England even though the dances themselves were derivative of English and French ones, were done to English tunes, and repeated familiar steps. ‘Nancy Dawson,’ ‘Sukey Bids Me,’ ‘Rickett’s Ride,’ ‘Mr. Turner’s Academy Cotillion,’ ‘Money in Both Pockets,’ and ‘Balance a Straw’ were some of the colorful names. The tunes, often borrowed from military music or well-known songs, were meant to be catchy, easy to play, and hard to forget. . . . Fiddles were most popular, and often a lone one sufficed; sometimes a flute, horn, or drum, or a combination of them, were used. Occasionally, if no instruments were available, dancers made do with an unaccompanied singer or ‘caller.’ “ (Daniels 113-4)
I personally liked Daniels’ account of the Puritans’ denial of individualism and their insistence on “togetherness” in corporate rejoicing in the Gospel, even in commonplace gatherings like country dance get-togethers. Part of knowing the joy of the Gospel message for the personal life involves expressing this new joy out of the foundation of Christ crucified and risen onto the Lord, in singing and dancing and rejoicing onto the name of the Lord.
And knowing the Gospel as a good word for sinners with the Lord involves bringing sinners to a corporate setting of rejoicing in the name of Christ in the church with the Lord.
“Then David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was wearing a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the LORD with shouting and with the sound of the trumpet.” (2 Sam. 6:14-15)
I would recommend Daniels’ account of the Puritans’ rejoicing in the Gospel through country dance meetings as a helpful tool for communicating the joy of the Gospel and the ingathering aspect of the Gospel to the pro-individualist sectors of unbelievers in metropolitan cities and the pro-urban shifts of postmodern culture.
The Puritans’ communal celebration of the Gospel was further put on display by my personal favorite highlight of the whole book – the Puritans’ lavish array of foods for family and friend get-togethers. The following menu items could very well put the contemporary dining scene of Clarendon in Arlington to shame.
” . . . Puritans had few reservations about unabashedly enjoying food. The ambivalences that characterized most of their attitudes toward pleasure failed to diminish their zest for the dinner table. Diarists placed an inordinate emphasis on food. Partly this was because the colonists encountered so many new and seemingly exotic foods, which were exciting to note; partly it was because food was so abundant after the first few years of settlement. But mainly it was because the Puritans liked recreational eating and saw few dangers lurking beside the ‘family altar,’ as the fireplace was called by one wag. When people who kept diaries went out to dinner, they usually noted in detail what they ate. John Winthrop’s journal is spare in reference to all pleasures except food; here he waxed eloquent about the joys of ‘fat hogs, kids, venison, poultry, geese,’ ‘fine strawberries,’ ‘good beer,’ and ‘rich pastry.’
. . . Dinner parties outside the family existed from the first settlements; in the eighteenth century they were inclined to be larger, more frequent, more formal, and more extravagant. The ‘art of cookery,’ as one author called it, began to be developed along sophisticated lines. Bookstores started stocking cookbooks and a few were published in Boston. . . . Mutton, turtle, salmon, and veal, the luxury meats and seafoods of the early modern era, became commoner treats at special family meals or dinner parties in the eighteenth century. By mid-century, New England’s two dozen newspapers carried innumerable advertisements for specialty foods often identified by place of origin: East Indies Bohea and Hyson tea, coffee, chocolate; West Indies fruit and rum; Irish pork and butter; Philadelphia flour; Dorchester ale. Spices, too, received big play; cloves, mace, nutmeg, pimiento, ginger, cinnamon, aniseed, and allspice among them. Vegetables abounded. In 1764 the New Hampshire Gazette carried an advertisement for a Portsmouth merchant who had ‘just imported from London, Black-eyed non-pareil and Essex reading beans; early bush and pale beans of all sorts; early Dutch, Yorkshire Battorica; sugarloaf, May, Red, turnip and winter cabbage; green, curled and yellow savoy; early and late cauliflower; broccoli, summer, winter, and mountain spinach; Spanish and silver onion; orange and horn carrot; swelling and Dutch turnip; redith; white mustard; Asparagus; white and green Gofs; cabbage and seletia lettuce; early cucumber.’
. . . A few types of dinner parties, often seasonal, became known by name and by the customs associated with them. The most famous (infamous?), the turtle frolic, took place in port towns – sometimes in a waterfront tavern, sometimes outdoors – and could be counted on to be loud, rollicking, and well attended. A huge sea turtle, preferably over two hundred pounds, served as the centerpiece and guest of honor. If the turtle had been towed back alive from the Caribbean by a sociable captain, as was usually the case, its arrival in town would be known several days ahead of the frolic, and plans made accordingly. Much rum, punch, and other food preceded the ceremonial cooking of the turtle, which the captain or some other specially trained chef supervised to the cheers of the other guests.
. . . Oysterbakes were less dramatic but more frequent. These, too, usually took place in summer or early fall and were held on the waterfront or as barbecues. Strict moralists associated oysterbakes with revelry much as they did turtle frolics. They were not wrong. In the 1780s, Providence briefly prohibited serving open oysters outdoors at night because the practice occasioned so many disturbances.
At the other end of the spectrum, in landlocked rural areas winter tea parties became popular at mid-eighteenth century. The high cost of tea, coffee, and chocolate gave these non-alcoholic drinks a special status as a treat for middle-class and for small-town residents who customarily drank fruit juices or alcoholic beverages. . . . The serving of tea at a party also took on a form as the central ritual of a party. Elizabeth Phelps, then a newly married woman, described tea parties in Hadley, Massachusetts, in the 1770s. Invited guests received formal written invitations a week or so in advance; usually ten to fifteen couples attended. Because the parties were customarily held in winter, people fretted about the possibility of bad weather. About an hour after everyone had arrived, the hostess served the tea by ’sending it round,’ which meant passing it cup by cup in a circle made by the guests. When everyone had tea, someone would be asked to say a blessing after which ‘the hum renewed’ and biscuits and cakes made similar rounds. After the first cups of tea were drunk, the circle broke up into smaller groups for chatting. About half an hour before the party was to end, the hostess circulated with nuts and apples as a dessert treat and a signal that the party was almost over. The parties lasted from about six to nine P.M. and were most often held on Friday nights. The men went outside before the women to ready the horses and wagons or the sleighs if snow permitted. New Englanders loved sleighs and considered it a wonderful ending to take one home after a party.” (Daniels 120-3)
The Puritans considered the shared meal an integral part of building Gospel piety in a community context, as well as a means for individual Puritans to express pleasure in their abiding with the Lord. And the Puritans were very extensive and proactive in their planning of various gatherings to bring each other into a place of belonging.
I think the Puritans’ affections for extensive partying and shared meals are very useful affections to apply to present day evangelism to individualistic unbelievers in major metropolitan cities and the new emerging pro-urban culture and generation. Many non-Christians have grown up without a place of belonging, such as children of divorced families, or young adults who immigrate into the city and feel radically displaced by the new cultural ethos and their competing fellow urbanites. Knowing the Gospel as a good word for reaching out to unchurched unbelievers in diverse sections of the metropolitan city with the Lord involves taking delight in hospitality and opening up the personal home and fellow Christians’ homes to receiving unchurched people from all walks of life, and from all sectors of the city, for bringing them to a new knowledge of the Gospel with the Lord. “So continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:46-47). I would definitely recommend that blog readers keep these Puritan affections for extensive partying and shared meals in mind, and glean further from the Puritans in Daniels’ book, for learning how to show the hospitality of the Gospel in human and practical ways to the new incoming urbanites of the metropolitan city and the new pro-urban generational movement.
There is one final negative highlight from Daniels’ book that I would share with blog readers for their own grace-rooted understanding and sympathetic understanding of the Puritan heritage: the Puritans’ struggle with relating the visible church with secular culture. Specifically, the Puritans had major struggles with making the Christian church prominent in their home surroundings, but not to a dogmatic degree on a par with their ecclesiological rivals, the Roman Catholics. As Daniels documented, the Puritans often had very extravagant and burlesque celebrations of the Protestant rule over England and against Roman Catholicism in the day known as Guy Fawkes Day. And on more than a few occasions, the Puritans were known to get out of hand with this celebrated day, as well as related Puritan celebration days like Pope’s Day.
“Another type of public spectacle in the eighteenth century more explicitly fused morality and ribaldry into an outdoor festival: the celebration of great historical events. Something of a continuation of the Puritan tradition of thanksgivings, these political carnivals had none of the quiet, earnest sobriety associated with seventeenth-century feasting celebrations. Often they got out of control and ended in riot, fighting, and vandalism.
. . . New England celebrated only one of these festivals on a regular, annual basis – Guy Fawkes Day, on November 5. Held to commemorate the foiling of the so-called Gunpowder Plot, when Catholic terrorists tried to blow up Parliament in 1605, Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated in seventeenth-century towns with ‘bonfires, guns shot off and much revelry.’ By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Guy Fawkes Day took on the ambience of a twentieth-century Halloween. People wore costumes, built floats to pull in parades, and feasted during the day; at night the celebration often degenerated into vandalism. . . . Originally endorsed by magistrates and ministers because it affirmed New England’s vigorous Protestantism, anti-Catholicism, and English patriotism, Guy Fawkes Day increasingly became the subject of discussion and debate. A particularly riotous ‘Pope’s Day’ celebration invariably provoked calls for a return to Puritan traditions of restraint and sobriety.
. . . Boston’s Pope’s Day celebration became infamous in the 1750s and 1760s. Regular commerce and business ceased. Groups several thousand strong gathered in both the north and south end of the city and marched toward the center in the early afternoon, holding images of the Pope and the Devil aloft. Much of the crowd had already consumed a considerable amount of alcohol before the march began. When the north-end and south-end crowds – now mobs – met, they tried to destroy each other’s Popes. John Rowe, a merchant, described one of these scenes:
‘In the afternoon, they got the north-end Pope pulled to pieces . . . The south-end people brought out their Pope and went in triumph to the northward and at the Mill bridge a battle began between the people of both parts of the town. The north-end people having repaired their Pope but the south-end people got [won] the battle, many were hurt and bruised on both sides, and brought away the north-end Pope and burnt both of them at the gallows on the Neck. Several thousand people followed them, hallowing, etc.’
This 1764 Guy Fawkes Day celebration provoked a particular outcry because a cart carrying the north-end Pope crushed and killed a young boy.” (Daniels 102-3)
This scenario, very common in the Puritan heritage and in the overall Protestant Reformation heritage, does raise some important questions for present and future generations long removed from the heyday of colonial America and the British Empire. And here I specifically raise these questions for present and future generations of Christians. The first question is this: Is it possible to engage in civil government in such a way that the Gospel is allowed to freely flourish in secular culture by Gospel-planting congregations, and yet not have the Gospel be turned into a harsh dogmatic message from civil government onto civilians? I would say “yes,” based on a pertinent passage of the Psalms. But I would also say that the Puritans and classical Protestants have not always shown this answer “yes” to be authentic in their lives.
Knowing the Gospel as a good word for civil government with the Lord involves getting involved in civil government with the mindset of Gospel-rooted, others-oriented stewardship for serving fellow citizens by the rule of civil government and allowing the church to be a Gospel-planting church in secular culture with the Lord. And knowing the Gospel as a good word for civil government with the Lord involves using personal engagement in civil government and political offices to give praise out of personal sonship in Christ onto the Lord, the Most High God, and using political offices to protect fellow citizens from atheistic and antagonistic anarchy movements within one’s home culture and from outside attacks from unbelievers of outside cultures, all as part of moving in a walk by grace with the Lord. “For by You I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall” (Psalms 18:29). David the psalmist of Israel wrote about triumph in his walk with the Lord over the enemies of David, the rebellious apostate Israelites and the rebellious Gentile unbelievers of the nations. Particularly, David speaks praise onto the Lord in the context of military conquests. The LORD God is David’s true fortress, a better protection for David than that provided by secular authorities and idolatrous unbelievers. And this would particularly be true for David’s overcoming of his alienation from King Saul, the rebellious king of Israel who led Israel to spiritual apostasy and a spiritual orphan identity apart from the LORD, the God who raised up patriarchs, father figures, as models for Israel’s government.
Did the Puritans look to get involved in a Gospel-rooted humility in civil government? The evidence says, to a small extent, “yes.” The Puritans were concerned for the visible church being protected from heresy through the Puritans’ institution of sound ministers and sound preaching in the sanctuaries of their local congregations. So when the Roman Catholics attacked English Parliament in an attempt to outlaw the Puritans from England, the big issue regarding Roman Catholics and civil government was whether the Puritans would be allowed to gather in their own congregations for their own direction of worship.
But to a larger extent, the evidence on the Puritans’ use of civil government also answers the aforementioned question on the Puritans’ use of government as “no.” The Puritans did not use the offices of civil government by Gospel-rooted humility as consistently as they could have. I should note here with the Lord that no Christian could live out Gospel-rooted humility to the fullest extent. We need to be sanctified or set apart by the Holy Spirit to holiness in the grace of the cross of Jesus, even beyond our shortcomings, and even beyond our best efforts at holiness.
“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors – not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” (Rom. 8:12-14)
Yet I would say of the Puritans out of Daniels’ excerpt on Guy Fawkes Day that the Puritans definitely took advantage of their place in civil government to make great boasts of themselves apart from God. They did not use the offices of civil government to give praise out of sonship in Christ onto the Lord in their own lives.
And this becomes an important point for addressing the other question that comes to my mind in reading about Guy Fawkes Day in Daniels’ book: What are we willing to suffer for the cause of the Gospel? It seems that the Puritans had sheltered themselves in America to get away from the papal abuses and crown abuses of England, but were often sheltering themselves because they didn’t want to face suffering. God was often not viewed as their true home; only their own surroundings could constitute their true homes. This becomes a major valid point of objection for future generations of Americans and post-Christian atheists. How can Christians talk about engaging in secular culture and winning people to grace when not even their forefathers could walk the walk?
I would say the best answer to postmoderns and post-postmoderns’ accusations against the church, and ultimately against God, is through Christians’ suffering loss of all things of secular culture for the cause of the Gospel. Does it really matter whether Christians have America as a safe haven for freely practiced religion? Does it really matter that the classical Protestant heritage does not captivate people’s minds as much as it used to? Knowing the Gospel as the foundation for true happiness with the Lord involves being willing to count all things of secular culture as loss for knowing the Lord alone as the Christian’s true home and true Father and true Deliverer in a walk by grace with the Lord. And knowing the Gospel as a good word for evangelism and for radically accusing unbelievers’ hearts with the Lord involves being willing to suffer all things as losses from the attacks of unbelievers across all sectors of post-Christian culture and the secular institutes of major metropolitan cities with the Lord, and using these places of suffering for talking about satisfaction in the Gospel alone as real evangelism among unchurched unbelievers and accusing atheists with the Lord.
“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 8:38-39)
I appreciate that Daniels went to the trouble of pointing out the Puritans’ faults in America as well as their spiritual Gospel-rooted innovations. Blog readers would do well to take up Daniels’ book and consider the Puritans’ shortcomings for addressing salvation history and the Gospel as a good word for sinners among accusing postmodern and post-postmodern atheists.
All in all, Bruce Daniels’ book Puritans at Play is a very informative and highly beneficial read for anyone who has an interest in engaging the Gospel in secular culture or who wants to connect America’s past with the present. Being a young and budding fan of the Puritans myself, I find it a great relief whenever a book comes out that shows some measure of appreciation for the Puritans’ history, flawed as these sinners were. Revisionist books about Christian history are too flawed and too frequent, and say much about the erroneous thinking of the present day. The Gospel is not an expert foundation for the “pretty people”; the Gospel is a good word for sinners. ” . . . For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance’ ” (Matt. 9:13). I highly recommend Daniels’ book as a worthwhile purchase for the Christmas season, and for beneficial reading overall.
Learning to live out the Gospel in the personal life with the Lord involves having to deal with massive heartaches and betrayed friendships from fellow sinners as part of knowing satisfaction in one to one relationship with the Lord alone. The foundation of Christ is a justifying foundation: God has sacrificed His Son Jesus to clear His believers’ names and transfer righteousness to them. And God shows this justifying grace in Jesus to teach His believers that God alone is their true home and their true Father. No human relationship can replace that. Any attempt to do so is making an idol out of human relationships.
I can say this for myself in learning to trust upon the justifying grace of the cross of Christ for my own life with the Lord. I have let down friends before, and I will do it again. And truth be told, I get massively disappointed when my friends let me down, because I get very touchy-feely about other people’s opinions and I idolize human relationships, making them the false comfort cookies of my life. I have to focus on Jesus’ atoning, justifying grace for my own life, Jesus’ washing of my guilty stains by the pure hyssop of His blood, for taking delight in one to one relationship with the Lord. And in preaching the Gospel onto my own heart and in trusting upon Jesus’ justifying and atoning grace, Jesus’ washing of my guilty stains by the pure hyssop of His blood, for my own life with the Lord, I also have to know this expert foundation of Christ crucified as the expert foundation for my offering of apology to offended friends about my sinful actions, both offended Christians and offended non-Christians, and my pointing of these friends to satisfaction in Christ alone with the Lord.
Knowing the Gospel as a foundation of justifying grace and rest for the personal life with the Lord means applying the Gospel and preaching the Gospel deeply onto the heart with the Lord, in shunning false desires for friendships and human relationships to the cross of Christ with the Lord and seeking satisfaction in one to one relationship with the Lord alone. And knowing the Gospel as a justifying and heart-breaking and joyful grace with the Lord means taking satisfaction in one to one relationship with the Lord during situations when all friendships are falling apart, especially at the work of one’s own hands, and when even the church has a certain stink to it thanks to one’s personal ethics. And knowing the Gospel as a beautiful touching grace for the heart and personal life with the Lord means seeking reconciliation with offended brothers and sisters in the name of Christ, and pointing friends to Jesus’ washing of the guilty stains of sinners’ lives for bringing these friends to satisfaction and rest in the justification of Christ alone with the Lord. “At my first defense no one stood with me, but all forsook me. May it not be charged against them” (2 Tim. 4:16). I rejoice to know Jesus’ purging of my sins by the pure hyssop of His blood for my own life with the Lord, in seeking one to one communion and satisfaction with the Lord alone as my true home. And I want to see this expert foundation of the justification of Christ as the expert foundation for dealing with relational conflicts in my life among my peers with the Lord. This is the Gospel message preached and personified for sinners.
