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Contents

Editor’s Note

Jonathan Leeman

CONVERSION IN THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE

The Beauty of Conversion

How beautiful art thou, O Conversion? A smitten man counts the ways

By Jared C. Wilson

His Arm Is Strong to Save: A Trajectory of Conversion in America

Historical changes in America’s doctrine of conversion show up in all sorts of interesting places

By Owen Strachan

Conversion and the Story of Israel

The New Testament doctrine of conversion doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s anticipated in the Old Testament story of Israel

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Conversion in the New Testament

The promise of redemption becomes a reality in the New Testament—a reality that includes a new covenant, a new exodus, new hearts, and a new creation.

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Conversion, God, and the Whole Self

Conversion is absolutely necessary for salvation. Why? Because of what our problem is, who God is, and what the gospel demands.

By Stephen J. Wellum

The Corporate Component of Conversion

Does your doctrine of conversion include the body of Christ? If not, it may be time to rethink it.

By Jonathan Leeman

Book Review: Revival and Revivalism

By Iain Murray

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

CONVERSION IN PASTORAL PERSPECTIVE

Conversion and Your Church’s Architecture

Here’s what one pastor learned through a blocked building project about the link between doctrine and practice.

By Jeramie Rinne

The Underestimated Pastoral Power of a Proper Doctrine of Conversion

Conversion unleashes the power of a new creation life, which is the power our people need.

By Jonathan Leeman

How “Belonging before Believing” Redefines the Church

“Belonging before believing” is an attractive and seemingly effective idea, yet it fundamentally redefines the church. This article offers a better, more biblical way.

By Michael Lawrence

Concepts of Conversion in the Inner City

From the Nation of Islam to mainline churches to the beginnings of a theological rebirth, this article canvasses concepts of conversion in the inner cities of America.

By Shai Linne

Testimonies of the Underestimated Gospel

9Marks asked all the T4G plenary and break-out speakers and panelists to provide us with a one sentence answer to this question: What were the human means and instruments of your conversion?

Six Ways to Give Your People False Assurance

Many people in our churches have a firm but unfounded belief that they are genuinely converted. Here are six pays pastors contribute to that problem.

By Mike McKinley

Book Review: Finally Alive

By John Piper

Reviewed by J. Mack Stiles

MISCELLANEOUS BOOK REVIEWS

Book Review: 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Reviewed by Nicholas Piotrowski

Book Review: Gospel Clarity: Challenging the New Perspective on Paul

By William B. Barcley with J. Ligon Duncan

Reviewed by Nicholas Piotrowski

Book Review: How Sermons Work

By David Murray

Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff

AUDIO

Finding Faithful Elders and Deacons with Thabiti Anyabwile

Thabiti Anyabwile discusses how to recognize and cultivate godly church leaders.

Posted on March 1, 2012 *Listen online Now »

A Biblical Vision for the Church with Mark Dever

Mark Dever proclaims what the church should be in this overview of 1 Corinthians.

Posted on February 1, 2012 *Listen online Now »

* This audio might not be supported by your particular device

Jonathan Leeman

Editor’s note

If you were a fan of the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, you might remember that Calvin had a transmogrifier machine. The boy Calvin leads his imaginary tiger Hobbes up to a cardboard box with the word “Transmogrifier” handwritten on it, and explains, “You step into this chamber, set the appropriate dials, and it turns you into whatever you’d like to be.” Hobbes wryly observes, “It’s amazing what they do with corrugated cardboard these days.”

The promise of true change is a little unbelievable, isn’t it? It’s the stuff of comic strips and childhood daydreams.

But make no mistake: this is exactly what Christianity promises—true and real change. Divine pardon. Reconciliation with God. Smashed idols. A new spirit. A new self. A new family.

Since this year’s Together for the Gospel theme is the Underestimated Gospel, we thought we’d jump on the bandwagon and devote the pre-T4G Journal to the underestimated doctrine of conversion. Forget Calvin’s transmogrifier machine. How about a whole new creation!

9Marks is deeply interested in the doctrine of conversion (it’s the fourth mark) because it’s tightly tied to the doctrine of the church. If the church is a house, conversion is the timber. The timber you use will dramatically affect the kind of house you get. Will you include the timber of divine sovereignty? Human responsibility? Repentance? Faith? My own article on the corporate component of conversion explores these matters further.

But start with Jared Wilson’s reflections on the beauty of the doctrine and Owen Strachan’s historical observations. Thomas Schreiner and Steve Wellum also help us to get our doctrine right. This is critical, friends. Owen’s piece especially will help you to see why, as will Bobby Jamieson’s instructive book review on Revival and Revivalism.

Once you’ve got the doctrine right, you need to think about how it connects to the life of the church. For that purpose we’ve called in Jeramie Rinne, Michael Lawrence, Mike Mckinley, and Shai Linne. Zach Schlegel’s review of Finally Alive might also surprise you with its pastoral insight.

There is underestimated power in the doctrine of conversion, but only if we get it right. Have you? Have your people? Does it show up in the habits, practices, and structures of your church’s life together?

By Jared Wilson

The Beauty of Conversion

To many, the Christian doctrine of conversion appears anything but beautiful. They say it’s coercive—“No one will force their beliefs on me!” Or it’s offensive—“Who are you to say that what I believe and how I live is wrong?”

In those senses, of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The most important thing about doctrine is not whether it’s ugly or beautiful, but whether it’s false or true. That said, the true doctrine of Christian conversion is just plain beautiful.

On one level, conversion is beautiful in the same way that all kinds of transformations are beautiful. In primary school, children study the metamorphosis of caterpillar to butterfly or tadpole to frog. In Sunday School, children learn how those transformations illustrate the change in a human heart from “dead in sin” to “new creation.” A flower blooms, an egg hatches, a baby bird spreads its wings for the first time. Each of these transformations is beautiful in its own way, but they are also all beautiful in the same way. In so many nooks and crannies of creation, God has hardwired the revelation of his glory which is brought to bear in the changing of spiritual death to eternal life.

One of the laws of the natural world is that things left to themselves don’t progress but regress. Everything dies. Yet in this very realm, God has encoded the beauty of change to something better here and there. Are these not all signposts to the wonder of salvation?

In fact, conversion is bigger than this. It is beautiful in its simplicity (think Romans 10:9) and in its complexity (think Ephesians 2:1-10).

But it’s not enough to say that salvation is beautiful. Let’s show.

BEAUTIFUL IN ITS ORCHESTRATION

Conversion is beautiful in its orchestration. There is a defining moment of conversion: one moment we don’t savingly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that God has raised him from the dead, and the next moment we do.

That initial decision to believe, to lay hold of Christ with the empty hand of faith, is the moment a predestined sinner minding his own business gets tangled up in the ordo salutis. God’s crosshairs were on him from time immemorial, but now the effectual call has met its appointed time. The planned way of a man has been interrupted by God’s guidance of his steps (Prov. 16:9).

Conversion is in some sense both the fruition of God’s plan and one point along its route. It’s a decisive moment, but how much deliberation is behind that moment! We see the outline of this deliberation in Romans 8:30: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Our eyes can behold people repenting and professing their faith in Christ, but they cannot behold the eternal weight of glory leading up to it and flowing out after.

There are multiple volumes to write about each step in Romans 8:30’s outline. There is beauty within beauty within beauty. A mustard seed of faith planted in the broken heart of a desperate sinner is the culmination of God’s foreknowing this sinner from before the foundations of the earth. Even in eternity past God, in grace, overlooked the eternal offense of this individual’s cumulative lifelong sin, predestining him in love for adoption as a cherished son. And then God sent his only begotten Son to provide the sinless atonement for him, that he could be justified by the righteousness of Christ upon the Spirit’s regenerating of his stony heart. It’s simply staggering, isn’t it? And that this seed of justifying faith would grow through the faithfulness of the Father to administer a sanctifying faith, again through the Spirit’s work, all the way to the promise of glorification, is more staggering still.

BEAUTIFUL IN ITS PROMISE

Conversion is beautiful in its promise. And oh, that promise! Isn’t it getting at what we all really want? What saint and sinner alike hope for every day? Everyone wants change. Everyone wants to believe bad will become good, and wrong will be set right. We all have our ideas on how this can be accomplished, but everyone basically wants the same thing—life.

God has set eternity in our hearts (Eccl. 3:11), and every waking moment thereafter is an expression of worship of one god or another, the expression of our innate desperation for the real, the true, the lovely, the promise of better and righter. Bruce Marshall famously wrote, “The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God.”[1] This is true for all our idolatries—be they sex or spirituality—but the overarching truth is that no one left to his own devices is seeking the God (Rom. 3:11). We want our gods to be God. What we are looking for is, in fact, found in the One whom we wickedly want to avoid.

So those who “find God” are actually those who are found by God. Our comforter the Spirit is scouring the earth, seeking whom he may raise to life. God is patient with his foreknown idolaters, not wanting any of us to perish but all of us to come to repentance. His Spirit turns the lights on in our heart, calls out “Come Forth” from the mouth of our tomb, and the unbelievable becomes believable. I can be different! I can change! I can know God and thereby know life! As the hymn says, “No guilt in life, no fear of death—this is the power of Christ in me!”

“We want our gods to be God. What we are looking for is, in fact, found in the One whom we wickedly want to avoid.”

The gospel reveals the real hope for me and for this world. All the beauty of creation, of the arts, of the human striving for progress and enlightenment is summed up and found true in Jesus Christ incarnate, crucified, buried, resurrected, and glorified. And just as his resurrection is firstfruits (1 Cor. 15:20-23), so our conversion to saving faith is the promise of conversion to immortality—that “we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:50-53).

BEAUTIFUL IN ITS MYRIAD WORKINGS

Conversion is beautiful in its myriad workings. The conversion of men to saving faith in Christ is beautiful in all the decisive moments it encompasses. Many in my generation and others “got saved” as we walked down an aisle, raised our hand, or repeated a formulaic prayer. And many in my generation who have become pastors will not resort to such special pleading in order to invite response to the gospel. We must all take care to make sure the biblical gospel is preached in biblical ways. But what a miracle that God uses fallible men exercising imperfect means to administer the perfect power of the good news of Jesus Christ!

I am not a dispensational pretribulational rapturist (anymore) but my conversion came after the Holy Spirit in his wisdom used a cheesy 1970’s “left behind” type of movie to soften my heart to desire Jesus for forgiveness and security. I would not employ such means today, but I am grateful that God is not snobby about the ways he brings his children to life. He doesn’t put on airs. His strength is perfected in our evangelistic weakness, even in our flawed preaching and pleading. It is amazing to me how God simultaneously works through and in spite of our gospel ministry.

All conversions to Christ result from finally beholding him as our Christ, the offering for our salvation. An obvious example is Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Very dramatic, that moment. For others, the moment is less dramatic. A child prays a prayer in children’s church. A man goes forward at the end of a church service. One fellow I know said he’d sat in church every Sunday for nearly three years before it finally occurred to him, “Wait—I need to be saved. I need to believe this.”

In his novel That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis in his inimitable way captures the ordinariness and the heaviness of one woman’s conversion:

What awaited her there was serious to the degree of sorrow and beyond. There was no form nor sound. The mould under the bushes, the moss on the path, and the little brick border, were not visibly changed. But they were changed. A boundary had been crossed. She had come into a world, or into a Person, or into the presence of a Person. Something expectant, patient, inexorable, met her with no veil or protection between…

In this height and depth and breadth the little idea of herself which she had hitherto called me dropped down and vanished, unflattering, into bottomless distance, like a bird in a space without air. The name me was the name of a being whose existence, she had never suspected, a being that did not yet fully exist but which was demanded. It was a person (not the person she had thought), yet also a thing, a made thing, made to please Another and in Him to please all others, a thing being made at this very moment, without its choice, in a shape it had never dreamed of. And the making went on amidst a kind of splendour or sorrow or both, whereof she could not tell whether it was in the moulding hands or in the kneaded lump…

The largest thing that had ever happened to her had, apparently, found room for itself in a moment of time too short to be called time at all. Her hand closed on nothing but a memory. And as it closed, without an instant’s pause, the voices of those who have not joy rose howling and chattering from every corner of her being.

“Take care. Draw back. Keep your head. Don’t commit yourself,” they said. And then more subtly, from another quarter, “You have had a religious experience. This is very interesting. Not everyone does. How much better you will now understand the Seventeenth-Century poets!”

...But her defenses had been captured and these counter-attacks were unsuccessful.[2]

The demons oppose her, sometimes contradicting directly, sometimes changing the meaning of her experience. But nothing — not even angels or demons — can separate Jane from the love of God. So in the quiet of an English garden, as in the expectant prayers at the sanctuary altar, or in the solitude of a lonely soul reading a Bible in an armchair, eternity drops down.

The myriad ways God brings dead people to life are beautiful, some instantaneously recognizing stark new realities, others realizing of their need over time. Some hear the message for the first time and respond in faith. Others hear the message all their lives but do not have the spiritual “ears to hear” until some day far down the road. This is artful. There is God, in the vast array of human experience and daily life, in the mundane and the spectacular, rehearsing resurrection over and over again. And even the most ordinary of conversions is extraordinary. The angels celebrated no less for my daughter’s first expression of saving faith in her room at bedtime a few years ago than they did Paul’s 2,000 years ago. Every conversion is a miracle. And the great beatific vision of Christ makes beatific visions of us (2 Cor. 3:18).

BEAUTIFUL IN ITS SOURCE

Conversion is beautiful in its source. Because the Creator is glorious, all he does is glorious. And because of this vital truth, it is not true enough to say that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Beauty lies objectively in the triune Godhead, whether beheld by mortals or not. David asks to dwell in the house of the Lord and to gaze upon the Lord’s beauty (see Ps. 27:4), but even if the Lord does not answer such prayers, his beauty is not diminished one bit.

“Conversion is beautiful because God is beautiful. He is beautiful in the greatness and majesty of his glory, the weighty sum of all his attributes and qualities.”

On the other hand, God’s beauty—more often called his glory—is reflected, magnified even, in the increase of beholding. So one of the beauties of God’s raising dead men to new life is that they come to reflect his beauty in sermon and song and hearts filled with thanksgiving (Col. 3:16). After Peter witnessed the sufferings and resurrection of Christ, he was able to refer to himself as “a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed” (1 Pet. 5:1). To answer the call of the gospel in saving faith, then, is in some way to obtain that beauty, and so magnify it. “To this he called you through our gospel,” Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 2:14, “so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Conversion is beautiful because God is beautiful. He is beautiful in the greatness and majesty of his glory, the weighty sum of all his attributes and qualities. The way the Bible talks about God’s beauty is, well, beautiful. From the holiness brought to bear in the Pentateuch narratives to the gushing of the psalmists to God’s epic reply to Job to the wonderment of the prophets to the witness of the Gospels to the epistles’ ecstatic exultations and divine doxologies to John’s bewildering apocalypse, the Bible is beautiful with God’s intrinsic and overwhelming beauty.

And this God—this marvelous, inscrutable, and holy God—knows us and loves us and chooses us and calls us and saves us. “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). For all the beauty of conversion (and there is still more to be explored for all eternity), it is sourced in and overshadowed by the beauty of God himself, whose glory extends without limits for all time, as well as to us, that we would see it and know Jesus and be changed forever.

About the author:

Jared C. Wilson is the pastor of Middletown Springs Community Church in Middletown Springs, Vermont and is the author, most recently, of Gospel Wakefulness (Crossway, 2011).

By Owen Strachan

His Arm Is Strong to Save: A Trajectory of Conversion in America

The room is dark and packed. Heat surges over the crowd, which sits enthralled by the lone man standing before them. He is holding forth for his audience, engaging their emotions and pointing toward a bold new reality. They reward him with whoops and yells. Eventually, the prophet ascends to a rhetorical climax: The need is dire, and the way forward is clear. Let’s go!

The response is thunderous. Revival has come.

Of course, this revival is no spiritual affair. It’s the annual MacWorld conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California. The promised bold new reality is the world of the iPod, or iPad, or iMac, and the revivalist is the now-deceased and thoroughgoing skeptic Steve Jobs. He doesn’t offer salvation, but self-indulgence. The crowd, too, has little interest in religion.

What’s striking are the motions and emotions of speaker and crowd. The fires of revival wax hot. It’s almost as if they learned to talk and act this way in some other time, on some other matter, that really did promise a bold new reality. Could it be that Americans simply learned to act this way in former times, when the kindling of Christianity, or at least a version of it, stoked those fires? And could it be that the thrill and theatrics of the revivalistic medium eventually overtook the message, so that now we just enjoy the drama, no matter what we’re talking about?

This is not an essay to discuss whether America is a “Christian nation.” Rather, I want to scan the past three centuries of American evangelical history to ask this question: how have Christians in different periods understood conversion and, more specifically, the means of conversion. America itself was itself something of a political “new birth”—and the spirit of reinvention has always been a part of the nation’s psyche. From the time the first Puritans set foot on Massachusetts soil, conversion and its implications have occupied the American mind and troubled the American soul.

Such a survey, I believe, leads to surprising places and yields a mixture of encouraging prospects and discomfiting conclusions.

TWO PREACHERS OF A GREAT AWAKENING

In 1740 Jonathan Edwards, America’s premier pastor-theologian of the era, said the following of “true conversion”:

There is no kind of love in the world that has had such great, visible effects in men as love to Christ has had, though he be an unseen object, which [is] an evidence of a divine work in the hearts of men, infusing that love into them. Thus the voice of reason, Scripture and experience, and the testimony of the best of men do all concur in it, that there must be such a thing as conversion.

He followed with a comment on man’s nature: “seeing man naturally is unholy, there must be a change of nature in order to their being happy in God” (Kimnach, Minkema, and Sweeney, eds., The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, 89). These remarks from a little-known sermon on John 3:10-11 entitled “The Reality of Conversion” suggest something of Edwards’s burden as a preacher: to help his hearers encounter the risen Christ in his saving mercy. In general, Edwards’ pulpit-work extended traditional Calvinist calls to the cross. He argued that salvation was only of grace, and not of works, and that the God who had created humankind as an emblem of his glory also stood over them as just judge.

When revival, or spiritual awakening, broke out in New England in the mid-1730s under Edwards, it was not from caramelized promises of a best self now, but from his terrifying depictions of the embodied justice of the living God. Consider this section from “The Torments of Hell Are Exceeding Great” based on Luke 16:24:

The punishment that is threatened to be inflicted on ungodly men is the wrath of God. God has often said that he will pour out his wrath upon the wicked. The wicked, they treasure up wrath; they are vessels of wrath, and they shall drink of the cup of God’s wrath that is poured out without mixture. Revelation 14:10, “The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture.” That is, there shall be no mixture of mercy; there shall be no sort of mitigation or moderation. God sometimes executes judgments upon sinners in this world, but it is with great mixtures of mercy and with restraint. But then there will be full and unmixed wrath. (Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 14, 304)

In our day, such an issuance from the pulpit would at least ruffle feathers and send skittish hearers to flight. In Edwards’s day, such preaching—coupled with dozens of sermons on the glories of heaven and the kindness of the Lord—drove hearers to conversion.

The same was true in the preaching of George Whitefield, the British “awakener” who visited the American colonies dozens of times in the eighteenth century. In “The Lord Our Righteousness,” an exposition of Jeremiah 23:6, Whitefield thundered of the need for a God-granted merit:

But thus it must be, if Christ be not your righteousness. For God’s justice must be satisfied; and, unless Christ’s righteousness is imputed and applied to you here, you must hereafter be satisfying the divine justice in hell-torments eternally; nay, Christ himself shall condemn you to that place of torment. And how cutting is that thought! Methinks I see poor, trembling, Christless wretches, standing before the bar of God, crying out, Lord, if we must be damned, let some angel, or some archangel, pronounce the damnatory sentence: but all in vain. Christ himself shall pronounce the irrevocable sentence. Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, let me persuade you to close with Christ, and never rest till you can say, “the Lord our righteousness.” Who knows but the Lord may have mercy on, nay, abundantly pardon you? Beg of God to give you faith; and, if the Lord gives you that, you will by it receive Christ, with his righteousness, and his All. (From The Works of the Reverend George Whitefield, London, 1771-1772, accessed here online.)

Like Edwards, Whitefield told his hearers to entreat the merciful Lord for pardon. He simultaneously explained the righteous character of God, detailing the way Christ has accomplished his mission of salvation, and implored his audience to close with Christ. The sermonic material was always God-centered. Whitefield made it clear that conversion occurs by God’s pleasure, yet that hearers were still responsible to respond. Thousands heard a variation of this message, and thousands responded in true faith in the period known as the First Great Awakening.

WHO KNEW DIVINITY COULD BE NEW? THE FORGOTTEN 19TH CENTURY

Yet Jonathan Edwards’ theological legacy is a complicated one. One might think that a widely venerated figure like Edwards would spawn a virtual empire of revivalistic Calvinists. And that’s partly right. Most of his immediate followers, including the men he trained and his expansive “kinship network,” preached as he did, “for souls,” as the lingo went. Yet these Edwardseans also modified their leader’s Calvinism, producing a school of thought that became known as the New Divinity (ND).

The New Divinity, led by figures like Timothy Dwight and Nathaniel William Taylor, developed either musings of Edwards or seeds of his theological ideas and made them major doctrines. On the matter of the atonement, the ND developed a theory known as “moral government.” They suggested that Christ’s cross-work demonstrated God’s displeasure with sin even as it righted the moral order of the cosmos and made it possible for the Father to forgive sin without punishing the wicked. This is not to suggest that the ND rejected penal substitution. Joseph McKeen, the first president of Bowdoin College, believed that substitutionary and governmental theories alike explained the atonement (see Robert Gregory’s valuable work Sober Consent of the Heart). According to McKeen, Christ paid personally for the sins of his people while at the same time satisfying God’s “moral government.” McKeen, like many of his fellow ND colleagues, preached the new birth using these categories and saw many come to genuine faith as a result.

The ND was a complex bunch. Some within this movement, which splits into groups like the “Tasters” and the “Exercisers,” held to a modified Calvinism. Others took the ball and ran.

One such figure was Charles Finney, who kicked off a major revival in the 1820s that spread throughout the Northeast, ultimately leaving it something of a “burned-over district.” Finney, to the surprise of not a few readers of his systematic theology, used Edwardsian doctrinal language and categories.

Edwards had conceptually coupled humankind’s “physical ability” to come to Christ with its “moral inability,” like a prisoner who stubbornly refuses to leave the cell even though the door is open. Finney and others picked up this theological distinction and carried it in a new direction, saying there is neither physical nor moral inability. Original sin does not hinder a person from repenting and putting his or her faith in Christ. To say it did would be “nonsensical,” said Finney (Lectures on Systematic Theology, 1847 edition, 26). He pressed the point:

Ridiculous! Edwards I revere; his blunders I deplore. I speak thus of this Treatise on the Will, because, while it abounds with unwarrantable assumptions, distinctions without a difference, and metaphysical subtleties, it has been adopted as the text-book of a multitude of what are called Calvinistic divines for scores of years. It has bewildered the head, and greatly embarrassed the heart and the action of the church of God. It is time, high time, that its errors should be exposed, and so exploded, that such phraseology should be laid aside, and the ideas which these words represent should cease to be entertained. (Lectures on Systematic Theology, 26)

“Conversion for Finney did not require a miracle; it was, with the proper techniques, a given.”

Finney avowed that in the sinner’s “inward being,” he or she is “conscious of ability to will and of power to control their outward life directly, and the states of their intellect and of their sensibility, either directly or indirectly, by willing” (Lectures on Systematic Theology, 35). With statements like these the die was cast. Edwards’s revival work was Calvinistic—it depended on the Spirit of God to regenerate the sinner through the free offer of the gospel. Finney’s revival work was Arminian—it did not depend on such spiritual intervention. This meant that conversion, dammed up by Edwardsian error, could now be loosed. Finney even saw himself as an evangelistic hero for unblocking the dam: “It fell to my lot, in the providence of God, to attack and expose many fallacies and false notions that existed in the churches, and that were paralyzing their efforts and rendering the preaching of the Gospel inefficacious” (Memoirs, 536-37).

Conversion in Finney’s scheme therefore became a matter of discovering the right agitator of the will. He put it like this: conversion “is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means” (Lectures on Revivals of Religion, introduction and notes by William G. McLoughlin [Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press, 1960], 13.) Accordingly, he instituted the “anxious bench” and other methods that placed tremendous psychological and emotional pressure on the sinner. This contrasted with Edwards’s own preaching, which placed theological or biblical pressure on the conscience. Conversion for Finney did not require a miracle; it was, with the proper techniques, a given.

Finney exerted a tremendous influence on fellow Christian preachers. According to Randall Balmer and Lauren Winner, scads of “other Protestants began to adopt his practices when they saw just how many converts Finney could win in a single night of preaching” (Protestantism in America, 59). This can-do spirit fit perfectly with a changing America. The spirit of the Revolution continued to pervade, and the American psyche still believed “impossible is nothing,” to borrow from the athletic shoemaker Adidas.

The so-called “Dedham Decision” of 1820 proved a tipping point for what had been developing for decades, even centuries—the final disestablishment of the Christian church. After the implications of this decision unfolded, local assemblies no longer enjoyed the tax support of every land-owning citizen. Now every pulpit would compete for adherents. Ministers would have to draw a crowd in order to continue preaching, to say nothing of eating. This brought a truly stunning change in American life that fit the political mood of the country perfectly. It resulted, as Nathan Hatch has shown in his hugely important book The Democratization of American Christianity, in a spiritual free-for-all. Innovation and no-holds-barred gospel proclamation were in; careful training and theological precision were out. As Hatch has said, religious “upstarts” eagerly tackled the challenges of this new age, changing the nature of American ministry and preaching:

Passionate about ferreting out converts in every hamlet and crossroads, they sought to bind them together in local and regional communities. They continued to refashion the sermon as a popular medium, inviting even the most unlearned and inexperienced to respond to a call to preach. These initiates were charged to proclaim the gospel anywhere and every day of the week—even to the limit of their physical endurance. The resulting creation, the colloquial sermon, employed daring pulpit storytelling, no-holds-barred appeals, overt humor, strident attack, graphic application, and intimate personal experience. (Democratization, 57)

Hatch concludes his sweeping summary with this: “The result of these intensive efforts was nothing less than the creation of mass movements that were deeply religious and genuinely democratic at the same time” (57-8). In one generation, America went from a nation featuring an established church (the exact form of which varied by region and state) to one in which disestablishment was the only rule. Highly gifted populist communicators like Finney flourished in such an open market.

AFTER FINNEY: INVITING JESUS INTO YOUR HEART

This is not to say that we are speaking of the Day the Calvinistic Music Died. As Paul Gutjahr says in his biography of Charles Hodge, the reformed influence of Hodge and others “is still felt” and “still appreciated” in “many conservative circles” in our own day (Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy, 385).

Nevertheless, a second major force had emerged in the evangelical wing of American Protestantism. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, figures like Henry Ward Beecher dropped the hellfire stuff altogether and began preaching a “gospel of love” that won national acclaim and secured Beecher a resplendent new parish in Brooklyn.

Evangelists like D. L. Moody and Billy Sunday carried the revivalistic torch into the twentieth century. Both men had an incredible desire to win people to Christ and an aversion to complicated doctrine. Sunday famously said that he knew as much about theology as a jack-rabbit knows about ping-pong, a quip that historian George Marsden noted was stated “with some accuracy.” Sunday in particular hewed to the course charted by Finney. He preached a free-will gospel at revival events that were as carefully orchestrated as Finney’s. Though Finney has acquired a reputation in some circles as anti-intellectual due to his fiery sermonizing, he was actually a brilliant man (his systematic theology is technical and impressive in its argumentation). Sunday was not intellectually prone (though he had a near-photographic memory) and his homiletical style was perhaps even more emotional than Finney’s. Roger Bruns has said that, though “the content of his message was pedestrian and simple, he had begun to turn loose on the platform the kind of fury and force that moved people elementally” (Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism, 78). Sunday brought his athletic background to bear on his messages, a charge that would not be said of many today: “He pumped his arms, gestured with every phrase, the pitch of his voice rising and falling with emotional moments. He seemed bursting with kinetic energy. The man had a presence under those lights, held audiences in a captivating fire” (ibid., 78).

Under Sunday, evangelism almost became a performance art. A preacher would make a spectacle and preach a simple gospel, and thousands would stream down the “sawdust trail” to convert to Christian faith. Sunday’s exploits were unparalleled in evangelistic history; by many estimations, he preached to more people than had any other revivalist in history. That is, until Billy Graham exploded on the scene.

Graham’s star shot into the ether in 1949 after newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (the inspiration for no less a cinematic character than Citizen Kane) told his staff to “puff Graham” after a number of celebrities publicly converted to Christ at the evangelist’s Los Angeles rally. Graham and his team had learned from forebears like Whitefield, Finney, and Sunday and had publicized these conversions. In a thoroughly disestablished and secularizing mid-twentieth century climate, publicity, more than ever, became the hand that rocked the cultural cradle.

Graham’s theology and methodology has been hotly, even ferociously, debated by scholars and pundits. Some see him as the methodological harbinger of evangelical doom; others see him as a beacon of unvarnished purity. (He was for many years the most admired man in America.) It seems to this writer that the truth, as often, lies somewhere in the middle. Graham is an evangelist whose preaching has introduced millions to the good news of Jesus. On the other hand, he made some regrettable choices, whether in seating liberal Protestant clergy on his crusade platforms or in delving into political matters (see Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy’s The Preacher and The Presidents). Though Graham did not believe that conversion came only from the “right use of the proper means” and credited salvation ultimately to God’s initiative, he did use language that many Calvinists dislike, such as inviting people “to accept Jesus into their hearts.” Graham, then, is a direct theological descendant neither of Finney nor Edwards. His language, reflecting a belief in man’s free-will, did dovetail with the general direction of American revivalism, though the evangelist spoke openly of his belief in “providence” and God’s control.

Graham’s position both influenced and displayed the general bent of many Southern Baptists and American evangelicals in the twentieth century. Revivalism of the more Arminian, free-will kind influenced the way modern churches have understood preaching, evangelism, and church membership. For many, preaching was basically evangelistic. It aimed at leading sinners to make a “personal decision” for Jesus. Churches as a whole, too, centered their evangelistic enterprises around producing as many verbal commitments as possible. Once an individual signaled his or her conversion by praying a prayer of faith, the church welcomed him or her into membership regardless of whether the person kept attending the church or not. God would be thanked for conversions, but the real credit would be given to effective evangelistic methods. The person’s conversion prayer would also become the ground of assurance.

THE INSTITUTION OF REVIVALISM

Revivalism became such an institution in America that it has influenced groups that might not even know that they have imbibed its practices. This is true of the Apple national conference even as it is true of the locker room and the political tradition. Many leaders today aspire, wittingly or unwittingly, to the revivalist’s methods since they seem to promise cultural dominance. If this is a generally unacknowledged reality, it is also deeply ironic in a secular and skeptical age.

The developments sketched in this essay have shaped the way many Americans understand conversion. Many people, including many reformed and conservative Christians, speak ill of “hellfire-and-brimstone” preaching. Pastors who would refuse to theologically identify with Charles Finney nonetheless speak of the church in terms of numbers and evaluate speakers based—in a profoundly Finneyite way—on how many hearers respond to their message. We have scarcely mentioned pragmatism here (and would note the importance of David Wells’s writing on this point), but a market pragmatism has merged with the revivalistic, Arminian trajectory to drive American Christians and those they influence to believe that bigger is better, that the basic needs of sinners are practical and earthly, and that conversion owes to a prayer, not to an inbreaking of God’s Spirit. The church, accordingly, is less the dynamic engine of God’s kingdom—that’s more the role of parachurch organizations and political causes—and more the repository of (some of) those who have prayed the prayer.

GOD’S ARM IS STRONG TO SAVE

Not everything that Charles Finney and those like him have preached has been bad or harmful. Paul, after all, could rejoice in the proclamation of the good news whether preached “in pretense or in truth” (Phil. 1:15, 18). This apostolic attitude surely bears on how we view those who preach the gospel from different convictions. We must evaluate the preaching, and we may find some preaching from self-professed evangelicals to be lacking. But wherever the true gospel of God’s grace in Christ is declared, we must, like Paul, rejoice.

“The task of the preacher is to lift up Christ in all his perfections and bid every sinner come and partake, knowing as he does so that a magnificent God, resplendent in holiness, majestic in strength, awesome in righteousness, delights to save.”

Yet we must also go further, doing what we can to stimulate a movement of God-centered evangelism and preaching in our day. We must recognize afresh that God alone saves the sinner, and that conversion is no by-product of staging and psychology but a gift of God’s Spirit, who, like the wind, blows where he wishes and converts whom the Father has chosen (John 3:8; 17:6). The task of the preacher is to lift up Christ in all his perfections and bid every sinner come and partake, knowing as he does so that a magnificent God, resplendent in holiness, majestic in strength, awesome in righteousness, delights to save.

In an environment that trains us to be man-centered, results-driven, and pragmatically minded, our challenge is simply to remember that Christ must be preached. As we do so, praying with all our strength for God to convert wicked sinners just like us who are in danger of hell, we remember as well that God’s arm is not weak or short. It is, now as always, strong to save.

About the author:

Owen Strachan is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology and Church History at Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author, with Douglas Sweeny, of The Essential Edwards Collection (Moody, 2010), and is a member of Clifton Baptist Church.

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Conversion and the Story of Israel

Virtually everyone today emphasizes that what we have in the Bible is a story, and rightly so. It has often been characterized as the story of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. It’s moving from creation to new creation.

Where does conversion fit into the story? It belongs to the part involving redemption.

Certainly, conversion is not the central theme in the story—what’s central is the purpose for which people are converted, which is also the purpose for which we were created. As the Westminster Confession says, we were created “to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” There is a new world coming, and there we will reign with Christ forever, and we will see his face (Rev. 22:4).

At the same time, conversion is fundamental to the story, since we will not be part of God’s new creation without it. And it is quite clear from the Bible’s storyline that we will praise God forever in the heavenly city for redeeming us, for rescuing us from the dominion of darkness and including us in the kingdom of his beloved Son. We will never forget God’s decisive, saving work in our lives through Christ’s cross and resurrection. It will always be central to our praises.

“Conversion is fundamental to the story, since we will not be part of God’s new creation without it.”

Since Israel’s history occupies the vast majority of the Bible’s storyline, I’d like to offer a brief sketch that demonstrates why conversion is fundamental to the story.

CONVERSION AND THE STORY OF ISRAEL

Israel’s history really begins with Adam. Adam and Eve were created to bring glory to God by ruling the world for God (Gen. 1:26-28). They were to be his vice-regents in the world he had made. They were to exercise their rule under God’s lordship by trusting in and obeying his instructions. But they rebelled against God’s lordship, worshiping themselves as creatures instead of giving praise and thanks to the Creator. As a result of their disobedience they died (Gen. 2:17). They were separated from God from the moment of their sin and were guaranteed eternal death if they did not repent.

Subsequent to their sin, Adam and Eve’s fundamental need was to be converted. They could hardly rule the world for God and extend his blessing to the earth when they were not in a right relationship with him.

God promised, however, that the offspring of the woman would triumph over the serpent and the serpent’s offspring (Gen. 3:15). The early history of humanity demonstrates the radical evil of human beings. All human beings enter into the world as the sons and daughters of Adam (Rom. 5:12-19) and offspring of the serpent (Matt. 13:37-38; John 8:44; 1 John 5:19). Only those who experience the saving grace of God would be delivered from Satan’s dominion. Cain, for example, showed which side he was on by slaying righteous Abel (Gen. 4:1-16).

How strong were the forces of evil? By the time of Noah there were only eight righteous left in the world! Human beings were radically evil, and Genesis 6:5 attests to the pervasiveness of sin. The offspring of the serpent held sway over the earth, but God showed his holiness and lordship by destroying sinners with a flood. So there is a new beginning, but it’s hardly an improvement since human hearts had not been changed (Gen. 8:21). The state of affairs at the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) shows that the new creation was not around the corner. The world was not being ruled by human beings who loved the Lord. The new creation could not come without a new heart.

The scattering and judgment of human beings at Babel was countered by the calling of Abraham (Gen. 12:1-3). Once more there was one man in an evil world. But this one man was called by God and promised blessing. Canaan would be, so to speak, the new Eden, and Abraham was in some respects a new Adam. Abraham’s children would be the children of God, and the blessing given to Abraham would eventually spread to the whole world. Human beings would rule the world under God’s lordship, just as Adam and Eve were called upon to do.

What is remarkable is how long it takes the story to unfold. The promises were not fulfilled for almost two thousand years! The book of Genesis focuses on the granting of the children promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. These men did not inherit the land of Canaan, and they certainly did not see blessing spread to the whole world.

Exodus through Deuteronomy advances the narrative, recounting Israel’s liberation from Egyptian slavery (Ex. 1-15). God was now fulfilling his promise of many children—Israel’s population was exploding. The Lord freed them from Egypt to bring them to a kind of new Eden, the land of Canaan. In this land God’s kingly rule over his people would be expressed, and the nations were supposed to see the righteousness, peace, and prosperity of a people who lived under God’s lordship. But the generation which left Egypt never got to the land (Num. 14:20-38). They refused to trust God’s promise, even after seeing the great deliverance from Egypt and all God’s signs and wonders. Most of the people of Israel who were rescued from Egypt were stubborn and rebellious, and did not truly know the Lord (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-12; Heb. 3:7-4:11). Their hearts needed to be circumcised—converted—so that they would love the Lord and fear him (Deut. 30:6), clinging to him as their God and walking in all his ways.

The children who arose after the wilderness generation succeeded where the previous generation failed. Joshua and Israel trusted in and obeyed the Lord, inheriting the land of Canaan promised to Abraham (Josh. 21:45; 23:14). Now Israel was poised to live in their new Eden and to show the beauty and glory of living under the lordship of Yahweh. But there was still a worm at the core of the apple. Israel’s obedience to the Lord was short lived. According to the book of Judges, Israel did not become a blessing to the nations, but instead imitated them. They relapsed into pagan ways. The Lord kept delivering the people when they repented, and yet their hearts remained unchanged, for they kept reverting to their sin.

What was Israel to do? Nearly 1000 years had passed since the promise was made to Abraham. Israel had an ample population and lived in the land, but the promises of worldwide blessing were not even close to being realized. Israel desired a king, convinced that he would deliver them from their enemies just as kings did from other nations (1 Sam. 8:5). When Saul was appointed as king, he was, like Abraham, a new Adam in some ways, appointed by God to rule Israel for the glory of God. But Saul, like Adam, rebelled against the Lord, and hence was removed as king (1 Sam. 13:13, 15:22-23). The rule of the Lord over Israel was not realized in Saul’s reign. God then anointed David as king, and, unlike Saul, he was a man after God’s heart, ruling the nation for God’s glory (1 Sam. 13:14). Still, David’s adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah demonstrated that he would not be the agent by which God’s blessings would reach the entire world (2 Sam. 11).

When Solomon took the throne, the paradise of the new creation seemed to be around the corner (1 Kgs. 2:13-46). Peace characterized his reign, and he built a magnificent temple for the Lord (2 Kgs. 3-10). Solomon ruled the people wisely and in the fear of God at the beginning, but he departed from the Lord and turned towards idolatry (1 Kgs. 11). As a result, the nation was divided into two kingdoms: Israel in the north and the Judah in the south (1 Kgs. 12). What commenced was a long slide into sin, which concluded with Israel being exiled by the Assyrians in 722 B.C. and Judah being exiled by the Babylonians in 586 B.C (2 Kgs. 17:6-23, 24:10-25:26). Nearly 1500 years since the calling of Abraham had passed. The promises of land, offspring, and blessing given to Abraham weren’t even close to coming to pass. Israel was no longer in the land but in exile. Instead of blessing the whole world, Israel had become like the world.

Why was Israel in exile? What was the problem? The prophets teach repeatedly that Israel was in exile because of its sin (e.g., Isa. 42:24-25; 50:1; 58:1; 59:2, 12; 64:5). In Isaiah the Lord promises a new exodus and a new creation. But the new exodus and new creation would only come through the forgiveness of sins (Isa. 43:25; 44:22), and this forgiveness would become a reality through the death of the Servant of the Lord (Isa. 52:13-53:12).

Jeremiah teaches the same truths. What Israel needed was a circumcised heart (Jer. 4:4; 9:25). In other words, they needed to be regenerated and converted. Jeremiah prophesies that a new covenant is coming in which the Lord will write his law on the hearts of his people, enabling them to obey him (Jer. 31:31-34). Similarly, the book of Ezekiel looks forward to the day when the Lord would cleanse his people from sin, removing their hearts of stone and giving them a heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:25-27). Their changed hearts would be a result of the work of the Holy Spirit, and as a consequence Israel would walk in God’s ways and keep his commands.

Israel did return from exile in 536 B.C., but the great promises found in the prophets were not completely realized. Israel struggled in the days of Haggai and Zechariah, Ezra and Nehemiah and Malachi. The promised work of the Spirit had not yet come to pass. They were waiting for a king. They were waiting for the arrival of the new creation.

NO BLESSING FOR ISRAEL OR THE WORLD WITHOUT CONVERSION

The history of Israel reveals that the new creation and the new exodus would not be enjoyed apart from the forgiveness of sins and a circumcised heart. The promises given to Abraham were not realized due to Israel’s sin and rebellion. The history of the nation is marked by repeated disobedience and a refusal to do the will of the Lord. Israel desperately needed its sins to be forgiven, and Isaiah teaches that such forgiveness would be realized through the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53. But Israel also needed the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in order to be saved; it needed to be converted. Conversion is fundamental to the story of Israel, since the blessings promised to Israel and to the world would never be theirs apart from conversion.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thomas R. Schreiner is James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and is pastor of preaching at Clifton Baptist Church.

By Thomas R. Schreiner

Conversion in the New Testament

This is part 2 of a two part biblical theology of conversion. Click here for part 1.

Conversion may be defined as turning away from sin and turning to God. Perhaps the classic verse which captures this definition is 1 Thessalonians 1:9: “For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God.” Here we see clearly the two elements of conversion, turning to God and turning away from idols.

CONVERSION IN THE NEW TESTAMENT: FROM PROMISE TO REALITY

The story of God’s triumph over the serpent promised in the Old Testament (Gen. 3:15) becomes a reality in the New Testament. The Old Testament promised a new covenant, a new creation, a new exodus, and new hearts for God’s people. And there is an inaugurated fulfillment of all of these promises through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is proclaimed in the New Testament.

Conversion in the Synoptics

In the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), the saving work of God promised in the Old Testament is encapsulated by the term “kingdom of God.” The kingdom of God plays a central role in the Synoptics, but we must also understand that the kingdom calls for conversion. The two elements of conversion can also be described in terms of repentance and faith. As we read in Mark 1:14-15, “Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’” (cf. Matt. 4:17). The good news of the return from exile heralded by Isaiah, the good news of the fulfillment of God’s saving promises, will be enjoyed only by those who repent of their sins and believe in the gospel.

The gospel in the synoptics centers on the death and resurrection of Jesus, for the passion and resurrection of Jesus dominate the story in all three books. It is the climax of the story! There is no kingdom without the cross. Jesus came to “save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21), and this salvation is realized only through his death on their behalf in which he gave “his life as a ransom for many” (Matt. 20:28; cf. Mark 10:45). Some who talk about the kingdom say little about conversion, but even a quick glance at the synoptic Gospels indicates that conversion is fundamental. One can’t enter the kingdom without it (cf. Mark 10:17-31).

Conversion in John

The centrality of conversion is also apparent in the Gospel of John. Indeed, John wrote his Gospel so that people would “believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). John uses the verb “believe” 98 times in the Gospel, underscoring the importance of this theme in his Gospel. Nor is believing in John passive. John uses a number of terms to convey the depth and activity of faith: believing is like eating, drinking, seeing, hearing, abiding, coming, entering, receiving, and obeying. The radical nature of conversion is expressed through the various verbs John uses to describe what it means to believe that Jesus is the Christ. Conversion, then, is at the very heart of the message of the Gospel of John. Eternal life (life in the age to come) belongs only those who believe in Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In other words, only those who are converted enjoy eternal life.

Conversion and the Kingdom in Acts

It seems clear from the above discussion that conversion plays a central role in the Gospels, and we can draw the same conclusion from the book of Acts. In Acts we find a number of sermons in which the gospel is explained to the hearers (e.g., Acts 2:14-41; 3:11-26; 13:16-41). Those hearing are often summoned to repent (Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22; 17:30; 26:20), which is also defined as “turning” to God (Acts 3:19; 9:35, 40; 11:21; 14:15; 15:19; 26:18, 20; 28:27). The gospel message involves an urgent call to turn away from sin and one’s old life. At the same time, those hearing the good news are summoned to believe and to exercise faith (Acts 16:31; 26:18). Indeed, the word “believing” is used nearly 30 times in Acts to describe Christians, indicating that faith characterizes those belonging to Christ.

It is scarcely surprising that conversion plays a major role in Acts since it records the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem to Rome (Acts 1:8; cf. also 1:6; 14:22). But it should also be observed that the kingdom of God is a major theme in Acts. It frames the book at the beginning (Acts 1:3) and end (Acts 28:31). Paul preached the kingdom in Rome (Acts 20:35; 28:23, 31), and Philip “preached the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 8:12), demonstrating that the kingdom centers on the gospel. The gospel that was proclaimed called upon the hearers, as we saw above, to repent and believe. Hence, we have another piece of evidence that conversion is foundational to any proclamation of the kingdom. The restoration of the world to God’s rule is the glorious hope of believers, but only those who have repented and believed will enjoy the new world that is coming. Those who refuse to believe, as Acts emphasizes frequently, will be judged.

Conversion in Paul

Paul doesn’t use the term kingdom of God often, but his eschatological worldview is well-known, and it accords with the eschatological character of the kingdom. Like the Gospels, he proclaims an already/not yet eschatology. Most scholars would agree that faith and repentance are crucial themes in the Pauline epistles. Paul often teaches that justification and salvation are obtained only by faith (cf. Rom. 3:21-4:25; 9:30-10:17; 1 Cor. 15:1-4; Gal. 2:16-4:7; Eph. 2:8-9; Phil. 3:2-11). He doesn’t use the word repentance as often, but it is not completely absent (e.g., Rom. 2:4; 2 Cor. 3:16; 1 Thess. 1:9; 2 Tim. 2:25). Paul uses many terms for the saving work of God in Christ, including salvation, justification, redemption, reconciliation, adoption, propitiation, and so on. It is indisputable that the saving work of God in Christ plays a major role in Pauline theology, but such salvation is only granted to those who believe, to those who are converted.

According to Paul, believers eagerly await the return of Jesus Christ and the restoration of creation (Rom. 8:18-25; 1 Thess. 4:13-5:11; 2 Thess. 1:10), and yet only those who are converted will belong to the new creation that is coming. Hence, Paul labors intensely to spread the gospel to the Gentiles (Col. 1:24-2:5), striving to bring the gospel to those who have never heard (Rom. 15:22-29), so that they will be among the circle of those saved.

Conversion in the General Epistles

The remaining letters of the NT are occasional writings addressed to specific situations. Still, the importance of conversion is stated or implied. For instance, we find in Hebrews that only those who believe and obey will enter the end-time rest (Heb. 3:18, 19; 4:3; 11:1-40). James has often been misunderstood, but rightly interpreted he teaches that a repentant faith is necessary for justification (Jas. 2:14-26). So too, Peter teaches that salvation is by faith (1 Pet. 1:5; 2 Pet. 1:1), and 1 John was written to assure those who believe that they have eternal life (1 John 5:13).

Conversion in Revelation

The book of Revelation culminates the story, assuring believers that God’s kingdom, which has already come in Jesus Christ, will be consummated. Those who practice evil and compromise with the Beast will be judged forever, but those who persevere to the end will enter the heavenly city, which is the new Jerusalem. Revelation underscores that only those who repent (Rev. 2:5, 16, 21, 22; 3:3, 19; 9:20, 21; 16:9, 11) will find life.

NOT THE CENTRAL THEME, BUT FUNDAMENTAL TO THE WHOLE STORY

To sum up, conversion is certainly not the central theme of Scripture. Believers were made to glorify God and to enjoy him forever, and we enjoy him and glorify him both in this world and in the world to come.

“It will be small consolation on the last day if one has contributed in a small way or even a significant way to the improvement of this world (as helpful as this is), if one is not converted.”

But conversion is foundational and fundamental to the story, since only those who are converted will enjoy the new creation. Human beings must turn from sin and turn to God to be saved. They must repent of their sins and believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ crucified and risen. It will be small consolation on the last day if one has contributed in a small way or even a significant way to the improvement of this world (as helpful as this is), if one is not converted.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Thomas R. Schreiner is James Buchanan Harrison Professor of New Testament Interpretation at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and is pastor of preaching at Clifton Baptist Church.

By Stephen J. Wellum

Conversion, God, and the Whole Self

From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture is clear that conversion is absolutely necessary for individuals to experience salvation and know God. Unless we turn from our sin and turn to God, unless we know experientially what the Bible describes as a spiritual, supernatural circumcision of the heart (Deut. 30:6; Rom. 2:25-29), we will not know God savingly and will stand under his judgment and wrath (Eph. 2:1-3).

As Tom Schreiner has demonstrated in his two articles in this 9Marks Journal, the necessity of conversion is taught throughout Scripture. It may not be the central theme of Scripture, but it is certainly foundational to the entire story of redemption, especially in terms of how redemption is applied to God’s people. Apart from conversion, we cannot not know God in a saving way. We cannot experience the forgiveness of sins. We cannot enter God’s kingdom and saving reign.

But, it may still be asked, why is conversion necessary?

POPULAR VS. BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING OF CONVERSION

Before answering that question, it’s worth clarifying that we’re not talking about “conversion” in the popular sense of the word but in the biblical sense. What is the difference?

If you do a Google search on “spiritual conversion,” the predominant entries will look something like this: conversion is the “adoption of a new religion” or the “internalization of a new belief system.” These definitions view “conversion” as a change in someone’s thinking or perspective which, for the most part, leaves the person fundamentally the same. This is not Christian conversion.

Instead, Christian conversion depends on the sovereign and supernatural work of the triune God in people’s lives. In conversion, God brings people from spiritual death to life. This enables them to abhor what they once loved—their sin and rebellion against God—and to turn and trust in Christ.

THREE TRUTHS WHICH UNDERGIRD THE NECESSITY OF CONVERSION

Why is this understanding of conversion absolutely necessary? Three foundational truths underlie the Bible’s teaching on conversion, and help us to see why conversion is so important in Scripture, theology, and gospel proclamation.

Let me also stress that these three truths are completely interrelated. One cannot correctly understand what the Bible teaches about conversion apart from getting these other truths right, which is simply a reminder that our theological beliefs are mutually dependent on one another. To get one area of our theology wrong will greatly affect other areas, and this is certainly true in our understanding of conversion.

The Human Problem

The first foundational truth which grounds and makes sense of the Bible’s teaching on conversion is the Bible’s view of the human problem. Even though human beings are created as God’s image-bearers and thus possess incredible value and significance, in Adam we rebelled against our Creator and thus became sinners who are subject to God’s wrath (Gen. 3; Rom. 5:12-21).

When the Bible speaks of sin and humans as sinners, it does not view this as a minor problem. It is not something that can be remedied by self-help, more education, or even personal resolve to become a better person. Such perennially present solutions greatly underestimate the nature of the human problem that Scripture powerfully and graphically describes.

Viewed biblically, sin is not only a universal problem which no person escapes due to our solidarity in Adam as our covenant representative (Rom. 3:9-12, 23; 5:12-21; 1 Cor. 15:22); it also constitutes us as sinners by nature and by action (Eph. 2:1-3). In Adam and by our own choices, we have become moral rebels against God, born into this world as fallen creatures. This is a condition we cannot change by our own initiative and action. And it is a condition, sadly, that we do not want to change, apart from God’s sovereign grace. In our fallenness, we not only delight in our sin and willingly stand in opposition to God’s rightful rule over us, but that very willingness is evidence that we are unable to save and change ourselves (Rom. 8:7). As a result, we stand under God’s judgment and wrath (Rom. 8:1; Eph. 2:1-3) whether we acknowledge it or not. In our sin, our state before the Judge of the universe is one of condemnation and guilt (Ezek. 18:20; Rom. 5:12, 15-19; 8:1). Scripture describes this state as death, both spiritual and, ultimately, physical (Gen. 2:16-17; Eph. 2:1; Rom. 6:23).

Salvation, the biblical remedy to this problem, reverses this dire situation. And the decisive point in this reversal is conversion.

What we need first is a savior who can pay for our sin before God and satisfy God’s righteous requirements and judgment against us. Our Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son incarnate, does just this in his cross-work for us. He meets God’s own demands; our sin is paid for in full (Rom. 3:21-26; Gal. 3:13-14; Col. 2:13-15; Heb. 2:5-18).

In addition, we not only need our sin paid for, we also need to be brought from spiritual death to life, which results in a transformation of our entire nature (Rom. 6:1-23; Eph. 1:18-23, 2:4-10). We need the triune God to call us from death to life and, by the agency of the Spirit of God, to give us new birth (Eph. 1:3-14; Jn. 3:1-8). We need a resurrection from the dead parallel to our covenant head’s own resurrection in order to enable us to turn from our sin willingly, to put aside our opposition to God and his rule, and to respond in repentance and faith to the gospel (John 3:5; 6:44; 1 Cor. 2:14).

In sum, conversion is necessary because it is part of the solution to the serious nature of the human problem as described by Scripture.

The Doctrine of God

The second foundational truth that grounds and makes sense of the Bible’s teaching on the necessity of conversion is the Bible’s teaching about the nature and character God.

As noted above, these first two truths explain each other. The human problem is what it is because of who the God of the Bible is. Our problem can only be seen in its true colors in light of God’s own personal, righteous, and holy character.

Conversion is necessary because we as sinful and rebellious creatures cannot dwell in God’s holy presence. Sin has not only contravened God’s character, which is the moral law of the universe, it has also separated us from God’s covenantal presence (Gen. 3:21-24; Eph. 2:11-18; Heb. 9). We who were made to know God and to live before him as his vice-regents, ruling as little kings and queens over creation for God’s glory, now stand under God’s wrath and condemnation.

Therefore, without God’s holy character being satisfied in God’s own sacrificial provision of himself in his Son, we cannot savingly know God (Rom. 6; Eph. 4:20-24; Col. 3:1-14). Further, it is not enough for a legal transaction to take place, as important as that is in the verdict of our justification before God. Salvation also involves the inner removal of sin and the transformation of our entire fallen nature. This begins when we are united to Christ by the regenerative work of the Spirit, which enables us to willingly turn from sin and rest in the finished work of Christ our Lord.

“If we fail to grasp something of God’s blazing holiness, his perfect righteousness, and his demand that his creatures act like obedient sons and image-bearers, we will never grasp why conversion is so important in Scripture.”

In other words, conversion is absolutely necessary because God demands that his creatures be holy as he is holy. Therefore, in order to dwell before him we must be clothed with the righteousness of Christ, transformed by the power of the Spirit, and made new creations in Christ Jesus (2 Cor. 5:17-21). There is no way for image-bearers to be brought back to the purpose of their creation and to enjoy all the benefits of the new creation without having their sin paid for in full, being born anew by the Spirit, and being united to Christ by faith.

If we fail to grasp something of God’s blazing holiness, his perfect righteousness, and his demand that his creatures act like obedient sons and image-bearers, we will never grasp why conversion is so important in Scripture.

In addition, if we do not grasp that our conversion only takes place due to the sovereign initiative of the triune God of grace, then we will never fully appreciate the depth and breadth of God’s love for us, his people.

Conversion Involves Repentance and Faith—Our Whole Selves Turning to God

The third foundational truth that helps us understand the Bible’s teaching on conversion is that conversion affects the whole person, and it affects the person as a whole. That is, in Scripture, conversion involves both turning from sin (repentance) and turning to Christ (faith). Both are necessary for conversion. And so repentance and faith are rightly viewed as two sides of the same coin.

In other words, biblical conversion is never merely a change of intellectual perspective that results in no change in the individual’s life. Unfortunately, in many of our churches, we find people who profess to have been converted, but they exhibit merely an intellectual assent to the gospel apart from any evidence of real change in their life.

Scripture clearly regards this kind of mere mental assent as false conversion (Matt. 7:21-23). God demands a whole-person response to him as his covenant creatures: our sin is a whole-person rebellion against God, and Christian salvation is a whole-person transformation, literally a new creation. Conversion involves turning from sin and turning to Christ, which involves the whole person—their intellect, will, and emotions (Acts 2:37-38; 2 Cor. 7:10; Heb. 6:1).

IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO TIP OUR HAT TO JESUS

Conversion is not optional; it is absolutely necessary. We cannot understand salvation and the gospel apart from a robust view of it.

Nominal Christianity, which is rampant in our churches, is not biblical Christianity. It is not enough to tip our hat to Jesus; we must experience God’s sovereign and gracious work in our lives, giving us new life and enabling us, by the work of the Spirit of God, to repent and believe the gospel.

“It is not enough to tip our hat to Jesus; we must experience God’s sovereign and gracious work in our lives, giving us new life and enabling us, by the work of the Spirit of God, to repent and believe the gospel.”

Our faulty understandings of conversion are often due to our faulty theologies. The remedy to this situation is to return to the Scriptures on our knees, asking that our great God would again revive his church so that in our proclamation of the gospel, men and women and boys and girls would repent of their sins and believe in Christ Jesus our Lord.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Stephen J. Wellum is Professor of Christian Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky and is the executive associate pastor of Hazelwood Baptist Church in Louisville. He is the author, with Peter Gentry, of Kingdom Through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants (Crossway, forthcoming 2012).

By Jonathan Leeman

The Corporate Component of Conversion

If your doctrine of conversion is missing the corporate element, it’s missing an essential piece of the whole. A covenant head must have a covenant people.

VERTICAL FIRST, HORIZONTAL INSEPARABLY SECOND

That’s not to say we should put the corporate element out front. One might think of N. T. Wright’s well-known line about justification being “not so much about soteriology as about ecclesiology; not so much about salvation as about the church” (What Saint Paul Really Said, 119). This is a clear example, in Douglas Moo’s almost-as-well-known line, of backgrounding what the New Testament foregrounds, and foregrounding what the New Testament backgrounds (cited in D. A. Carson, “‘Faith’ and ‘Faithfulness’”).

There can be no true reconciliation between humans until individual sinners first reconcile with God. The horizontal necessarily follows the vertical. Ecclesiology necessarily follows soteriology. Which is to say, the corporate element must not come first, lest we lose the whole thing.

But it must come. Indeed, the corporate component must remain within the structure of the doctrine of conversion itself. Our corporate unity in Christ is not just an implication of conversion, it’s part of the very thing. Being reconciled to God’s people is distinct from but inseparable from being reconciled to God.

Sometimes this gets lost in our emphasis on the mechanics of conversion, as when our doctrinal discussions about conversion don’t move beyond the relationship of divine sovereignty and human responsibility or the necessity of repentance and faith. However, a full-orbed understanding of conversion should also include an account of what we’re moving from and to. To be converted involves moving from death to life; from the domain of darkness to the domain of light. And it involves moving from people-less-ness to belonging to a people, from being a stray sheep to belonging to the flock, from being something that’s dismembered to being a member of the body.

Notice Peter’s parallel statements:

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:10)

Receiving mercy (vertical reconciliation) is simultaneous to becoming a people (horizontal reconciliation). God has mercy on us by forgiving our sins, and a necessary consequence of that is inclusion in his people.

CORPORATE NATURE OF THE COVENANTS

Indeed, the corporate element of our conversion can be seen by looking no further than the covenantal structure of the Bible. It’s true that all the Old Testament covenants find their fulfillment in the seed (singular) of Abraham. Jesus is the new Israel. Yet it’s also true that everyone united to Christ through the new covenant also becomes the Israel of God and the seed (plural) of Abraham (Gal. 3:29; 6:16).

In other words, a covenantal head by definition brings with him a covenantal people (see Rom. 5:12ff). To belong to the new covenant, then, is to belong to a people.

Not surprisingly, the Old Testament promises of a new covenant are therefore promised to a people: “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). The new covenant promises forgiveness (vertical), and it promises a community of brothers (horizontal).

VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL IN EPHESIANS 2

The entire story is put on display wonderfully in Ephesians 2. Verses 1 to 10 explain forgiveness and our vertical reconciliation with God: “By grace you have been saved.” Verses 11 to 20 then present the horizontal: “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility” (v. 14).

Notice that the activity of verse 14 is in the past tense. Christ has already made Jew and Gentile one. There is no imperative here. Paul is not commanding his readers to pursue unity. Instead, he’s speaking in the indicative. It’s what they are because God has done it, and God did it in precisely the same place he accomplished the vertical reconciliation—in the cross of Christ (see also the relationship between indicative and imperative in Eph. 4:1-6).

By virtue of Christ’s new covenant, corporate unity belongs to the indicative of conversion. To be converted is to be made a member of Christ’s body. Our new identity contains an ecclesial element. Christ has made us ecclesial persons.

“To be converted is to be made a member of Christ’s body. Our new identity contains an ecclesial element. Christ has made us ecclesial persons.”

Here’s an easy way to see it. When mom and dad go down to the orphanage to adopt a son, they bring him home and place him at the family dinner table with a new set of brothers and sisters. To be a son is not the same thing as being a brother. And sonship comes first. But brotherhood follows necessarily.

That is to say, conversion signs you up for a family photo.

PERSONAL APPLICATION: JOIN A CHURCH

What’s the application for our lives? Simple: join a church!

You’ve been made righteous, so be righteous. You’ve been made a member of his body, so join an actual body. You’ve been made one, so be one with an actual group of Christians.

CORPORATE APPLICATION: GET THE MECHANICS RIGHT

What does this mean for our churches? It means that getting the aforementioned mechanics of conversion right in our doctrine is hugely important. We want strong conceptions of both divine sovereignty and human responsibility; both repentance and faith. Imbalances here will lead to an imbalanced and messed up church. What you put into the pot of conversion will become the soup of the church.

If your doctrine of conversion lacks a strong conception of God’s sovereignty, your preaching and evangelism will risk becoming manipulative and man-pleasing. Your approach to leadership is more likely to become pragmatic. You will risk burning out yourself and your congregation with an over-burdened schedule. Your membership practices will become entitlement or benefits based (like a country club). Your practices of accountability and discipline will mostly vanish. You will put holiness at risk. The list goes on.

If your doctrine of conversion lacks a strong conception of human responsibility, you are more likely to poorly steward your own gifts, as well as your people’s gifts. You will more likely be tempted toward complacency in evangelism and sermon preparation. You may be less likely to communicate love and compassion toward those who are hurting. You might come across to others as severe or pat. You might suffer from a weak prayer life, and so forfeit all the blessings that could be yours. You will put love at risk. The list goes on.

If your doctrine of conversion lacks a strong conception of repentance, you will be quick to offer assurance of salvation, and slow to ask people to count the cost of following Christ. You will more likely tolerate worldliness and divisiveness in the church, and your church members just might tolerate these things because many of them will remain in the shallows of the faith. Nominalism will also be more common, because grace will come cheap. In general, the church will like to sing about Christ as Savior, but not much about Christ as Lord, and it won’t look much different than the world.

If your doctrine of conversion lacks a strong conception of faith, you will have a church filled with anxious, self-righteous, man-pleasing legalists. The more self-disciplined members of the church will feel self-deceivingly good about themselves, while the less-disciplined members will quietly hide away their secret sin and steadily learn to condemn themselves and resent others. Transparency will be rare; hypocrisy common. Outsiders and prodigals will feel not feel the warmth and compassion of true grace. Cultural preferences will be confused with law. The church will like to sing about the marching orders of Christ the King, but not so much about a blood-stained Lamb, a Lamb slain for them.

“Do you want a healthy church? Then work on your doctrine of conversion, and teach all sides of it to your people.”

I’m broad-stroking, of course. Things don’t fall out quite this neatly. But the basic idea in all of these examples trades on the tight connection between conversion and the church. If conversion necessarily involves a corporate element, or, more concretely, if individual conversions necessarily produce a united people, then everything else that you stick into your doctrine of conversion will dramatically affect what kind of church you get.

Do you want a healthy church? Then work on your doctrine of conversion, and teach all sides of it to your people. Make sure, furthermore, that the structures and programs of your church cohere with this multi-faceted and powerful doctrine.

About the author:

Jonathan Leeman, a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, is the editorial director for 9Marks and the author of Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Belongs to Jesus and Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (both Crossway, April 2012).

Reviewed by Bobby Jamieson

Book Review: Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858

Iain Murray, Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858. Banner of Truth, 1994. 480 pages. $33.00.

How did we get here?” is a question that is always relevant and often illuminating. Yet contemporary evangelicals don’t ask it as often as we should.

In his book Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism, 1750-1858, Iain Murray tells a story that helps explain how evangelicals—Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, and more—got to where we are today.

FROM REVIVAL…

The book’s title tells the whole story in a nutshell. Over the one hundred and nine years Murray examines, from 1750 to 1858, American evangelicals’ understanding and experience of evangelism morphed from “revival” to “revivalism.”

Background: The First Great Awakening

Not that what came before 1750 wasn’t important. From about 1735 to 1740, under the preaching of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and others, the American colonies experienced a massive spiritual enlivening which came to be known as the First Great Awakening. This phenomenon was driven by preaching that emphasized the biblical truths of the holiness of God, the gravity of sin, man’s enslavement to sin, and the need for the Holy Spirit to give new birth so that people might repent, believe, and be saved.

Though superficial responses to such preaching inevitably got mixed up with the true, contemporaries of these events regarded them as a genuine revival. They believed this spiritual movement had been caused by God’s sovereign choice to pour out his Spirit in a profound and unusual way, thus causing the ordinary, biblically appointed means of evangelism to bear extraordinary fruit.

Heirs of Edwards and Whitefield

Murray’s story, then, begins with the heirs of the First Great Awakening who ministered from New England to Virginia, men such as Samuel Davies and Alexander McWhorter (chs. 1-4). These pastors held to the same theology that drove Edwards’ and Whitefield’s preaching, and they had been personally impacted by the events of 1735-1740. Throughout the second half of the eighteenth century, these men and the ministers who followed them periodically experienced the blessing of God on their ministries in ways that also merited the label “revival.”

Revival: Gift of God, not Guaranteed Result

Like their predecessors, these pastors knew that revivals were the sovereign work of God and could not be explained in any other way. Therefore, they preached the gospel, pleaded with sinners, and prayed for fruit like they had for years; and for reasons known only to God, he sometimes blessed these labors remarkably, and sometimes he didn’t.

“These revivals, in other words, were neither planned by men nor achieved by men. They did not involve any unusual or novel evangelistic techniques. They were understood, therefore, to be gifts of God.”

These revivals, in other words, were neither planned by men nor achieved by men. They did not involve any unusual or novel evangelistic techniques. They were understood, therefore, to be gifts of God.

…TO REVIVALISM

Then, beginning around 1800, revival began to break out on a greater scale across the young nation, from the northeast to the western states of Kentucky and Tennessee. And what’s truly remarkable is that this large-scale revival continued in one form or another for about thirty years, rightly earning it the title of the Second Great Awakening.

The Second Great Awakening

In the beginning, this revival was understood in the same terms as previous ones. Yet over time, theological and practical shifts began to occur that amounted to a revolution by the revival’s end. (For this part of the story, see chapters 5 through 12.)

For example, in 1800 in Cane Ridge, Kentucky the Presbyterians’ outdoor “communion seasons” (which followed a traditional Scottish practice) became the flashpoint for what looked like a major movement of the Spirit. The meetings grew quickly. Ministers from other denominations, such as the Methodists, shared in the preaching. Large numbers of people who were unaffiliated with any church traveled great distances to come and hear. Many people responded to the preaching and singing, sometimes in disruptively dramatic ways.

Eventually, the leaders of these meetings divided over how to respond to excessive displays of emotion in these meetings. Some—most of the Presbyterians—thought such displays should be permitted or rebuked depending on the case, while others—the Methodists—tended to treat all of them as proof of the work of God’s Spirit.

From this point, the Methodist leaders of this work in Kentucky took a strategy that was originally a response to revival—namely, protracted outdoor meetings—and made it a key component of their efforts to bring about revival. Further, these Methodists and some others, undergirded by a radically different doctrine of conversion, began to focus their efforts on inducing outward, immediate responses to the gospel.

Two Major Shifts

The story runs along similar lines elsewhere. By the 1820s and 1830s, two major shifts had occurred throughout American evangelicalism.

The first is a doctrinal shift regarding conversion. Up to 1800, evangelicals almost universally believed and preached that God must sovereignly give someone a new nature to enable him or her to repent and believe. By the 1830s, this was widely replaced by an understanding of conversion in which the decision to repent and believe lay entirely within an individual’s own power.

This led to (or, in some cases, followed) a shift in evangelistic practice. Many evangelicals adopted practices that sought to bring about an immediate decision. The “anxious bench,” the altar call, singling people out personally in public prayer, warning hearers to respond immediately or else lose their chance to repent—all these practices and more grew out of the new belief that conversion is something within a person’s power to achieve, or even to effect in others.

The Result: Revivalism

The result of these two shifts is that church leaders began to regard revival as something that could be infallibly secured through the use of proper means—“proper” being whatever would induce an immediate decision or external token of decision. This understanding was most vigorously promoted by Charles Finney, but by the end of the Second Great Awakening it had become a given among a strong majority of American evangelicals. Historian William McLoughlin even went so far as to say that by the mid-nineteenth century, this new system was the national religion of the United States (277).

Thus, revivalism was born. To be sure, revivalism grew up in the soil of genuine revival. But this new practice of revivalism radically differed from the previous understanding of revival it so quickly supplanted. A “revival” became synonymous with a meeting designed to promote revival. Unlike previous generations, evangelicals after 1830 gained the ability, so to speak, to put a revival on the calendar months in advance.

The goal of such revivals was to secure as many immediate decisions for Christ as possible. As such, awareness of the possibility of false conversion seemed to simply vanish from the evangelical consciousness. Few asked whether their new measures just might create as many false converts as true disciples.

SEVEN LESSONS FOR PASTORS

At the risk of stating the obvious, it doesn’t take too much effort to see how we got from the 1830s to the evangelistic practices that many of us take for granted today.[1] That holds true whether we’re thinking of stadium-based crusades or churches which seek to recreate that atmosphere every Sunday.

Yet, as Murray rightly argues in the book’s final chapter, this type of revivalism and the theology that supports it represent a serious departure from both a biblical doctrine of conversion and a biblical practice of evangelism. Therefore, Revival and Revivalism should inspire us to reflect critically and carefully about our churches and our evangelistic practices.

Toward that end, here are seven lessons from the book that should be especially relevant for pastors.

1. Don’t Confuse an External Act with Inward Change.

First, don’t confuse an external act with inward change. Murray writes about the beginnings of the altar call,

Nobody, at first, claimed to regard it as a means of conversion. But very soon, and inevitably, answering the call to the altar came to be confused with being converted. People heard preachers plead for them to come forward with the same urgency with which they pleaded for them to repent and believe. (186; see also 366)

It’s possible to walk an aisle, pray a “sinner’s prayer,” and do any number of other activities without being converted. And it’s possible to be converted without taking any of those particular outward steps (though of course conversion will always manifest itself in visible fruit).

Therefore, pastors should not speak about any external action as if it were identical with conversion. And they should be wary of evangelism techniques which seem to equate the two.

2. Beware of Producing False Converts.

Second, beware of producing false converts. Of course it’s inevitable that some people who initially profess faith will later prove unrepentant, but pastors can evangelize in a way that either minimizes or multiplies false converts. For instance, Murray cites Samuel Miller to the effect that the anxious seat (precursor to the altar call) promotes “the rapid multiplication of superficial, ignorant, untrained professors of religion”—that is, false converts (366).

3. Be Cautious about Giving Immediate Assurance of Salvation.

Third, be cautious about giving immediate assurance of salvation. Perseverance, as the New Hampshire Confession says, is the grand mark of a true Christian (Heb. 3:6, 14). Faith makes itself known by its fruits—whether good or bad, true or false (Matt. 7:15-27). Yet Murray points out that the new revivalistic methods were actually founded on the promise of immediate assurance:

But the anxious-seat evangelism wanted to do away with any doubts in those who made the public response. The whole strength of its appeal…lay in its suggestion that a response would ensure salvation. To have conceded that there was no sure connection between answering a public appeal and being converted would have been to undermine the whole system. (368)

In other words, the whole point of the new methods was that a response guaranteed salvation. And on that basis, preachers assured people of their salvation immediately and unreservedly simply for coming forward at the end of the service.

Assurance of salvation is possible for the youngest and weakest Christian, but it should always be grounded in the objective work of Christ and corroborated by the fruit of a transformed life.

So pastors, be cautious about giving immediate assurance of salvation. And be careful not to give it on the wrong basis.

4. Tether your Ministry to What God Requires in his Word.

Fourth, tether your ministry to what God requires in his Word. In some ways, the crucial turning point in Murray’s narrative comes when the early nineteenth-century Methodists came to regard certain novel, extra-biblical practices—long-duration outdoor camp meetings, techniques to secure immediate decisions, and so on—as the crucial keys to producing conversions (184).

Certainly, Christians are free to pursue evangelism in ways that are not directly exampled in Scripture. If Paul could rent the hall of Tyrannus (Acts 19:9), why shouldn’t modern evangelicals evangelize in stadiums?

But the catch is that these new methods became mandates. They became magic bullets. And they became the givens without which people could not imagine anyone getting saved.

Instead, place your confidence in what God has required you to do—preach the Word. Trust that God has given you, in his Word, what you need to be a faithful pastor. Labor with the tools he’s given, and trust that he will cause your work to bear fruit.

5. Make Sure your Theology Drives your Practice, not Vice Versa.

Fifth, make sure your theology drives your practice, not vice versa. Murray writes about the spread of the altar call among Baptists, who in the early 19th century were almost unanimously reformed in their soteriology:

It had not captured anything like the majority of the churches in the 1830s but there can be no doubt that, with the Baptists also, it was the alleged success of the new evangelism which hastened both its adoption and the gradual doctrinal shift to justify it. (325-326)

In this case the practical tail wagged the theological dog. The logic of the new evangelism worked its way into their theological system and rewrote the DNA. Without realizing it, huge numbers of Baptists adopted an evangelistic method that was not only at odds with their theological commitments, but eventually undid them.

6. Don’t Equate Outward Success with a Divine Endorsement.

Sixth, don’t equate outward success with a divine endorsement. During the conflicts Murray chronicles between the old guard and the new, the revivalists often played the trump card of outward success (282). As one contemporary pastor has famously put it, “Never criticize what God is blessing.”

“How can you be sure that God is blessing a ministry because of some new method rather than in spite of it?”

The first problem with the argument from success is that “success” is not always success. Murray writes, “What was indisputable was that making ‘conversion’ a matter of instant, public decision, with ascertainable numbers immediately announced in the religious press, produced a display of repeated ‘successes’ on a scale never before witnessed” (283).

But how many of these “decisions” represented genuine conversions? How many were baptized, joined churches, and began new lives? If the numbers back then match the numbers generated through similar methods today, the likely answer is, “Not many.”

The second problem with the argument from success is that, in one way or another, God is always blessing us in spite of ourselves. Every time God uses a pastor’s preaching to convert people, he’s blessing that man’s work in spite of that man’s sins and errors. So how can you be sure that God is blessing a ministry because of some new method rather than in spite of it?

Certainly we should expect God to bless preaching and practices that are in line with his Word. But we can’t reduce his workings to the mechanics of “most faithful” = “most blessing.” Nor can we work backwards from apparent success to discern what must be correct theology and practice.

7. Celebrate the Normal.

Murray writes of the earlier generation of ministers who regarded revival as a gift from God, “The men of the Old School, while believing in revival as fervently as they did…nevertheless knew no biblical reason to be cast down by the normal” (385). These men knew that most of the time, ministry is slow and plodding work. They knew that some sow and others reap. They “believed that God would grant his blessing in the measure that was appropriate—whether in its heightened form…or in quieter ways” (385).

So, finally, don’t be discouraged by slow-ripening fruit. Instead, rely on God to work through the regular means of grace. Celebrate the normal.

GOOD REASONS WHY IT’S ALREADY BECOMING A CLASSIC

As I hope this review has proved, there are many good reasons why Revival and Revivalism is already becoming a classic. It’s long, dense, and somewhat rambling, but it more than repays the time and effort it takes to get through it. I commend it to all present and aspiring church leaders, and to any Christian who likes to ask, “How did we get here?”

About the author:

Bobby Jamieson is assistant editor for 9Marks, is the author of the 9Marks Healthy Church Study Guides (Crossway, forthcoming 2012), is an MDiv student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and is a member of Third Avenue Baptist Church.

By Jeramie Rinne

Conversion and Your Church’s Architecture

In 2004, our church building project hit a wall.

Up to that point, our plans to expand the church facility had moved forward slowly but surely. The congregation had approved drawings, voted to build, raised funds, and hired specialists to acquire the necessary building permits. And one by one the town granted our permits, until we came to the Board of Health. In 2004, the Board indicated that our septic system plans would not pass. So we withdrew our application from the town.

GOOD INTENTIONS

It was a confusing time for the church. Why would God lead us so far only to be denied? Why wouldn’t God want an evangelical church to grow, especially in New England?

But perhaps the most confusing thing was that our primary motive for the building was community evangelism.

The project’s centerpiece was a full-sized gymnasium. We envisioned using the space, dubbed the “Family Life Center,” for outreach programs: Christian basketball and floor hockey leagues for kids, teen drop-in times in the afternoon, and even adult sports leagues and exercise classes. We hoped to draw people into the facility, build relationships, and perhaps win a hearing for Jesus. In our community with lots of kids and lots of sports, the project seemed like a perfect example of contextualized evangelism.

Why wouldn’t God bless our sincere desire for community outreach?

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION

Good intentions don’t always arise from good theology, or result in good practice. We pastors often have a zeal to “reach people for Christ” that causes us to leap into evangelistic action without careful theological reflection. We sniff around for what “works” to bring people to Jesus. We ask each other, “What’s your church doing to reach out?” Is it a top worship song, the right lighting, a new program, a video series based on a best-selling book, a community service strategy, or a bold scheme for restructuring the church itself? Maybe it’s a new facility!

But sometimes, in order to move forward in effective evangelism we must pause and take a step back. Rather than speeding ahead asking “What works?” we need to pull over and ask a more fundamental question: “How are people saved?”

THEOLOGY BEGETS PRACTICE

Pastors need to ask this fundamental question because our theology of conversion begets our practice of evangelism.

If conversion is merely an act of a person’s will in responding to the gospel, then our evangelistic efforts will trend toward affecting the emotions and felt needs of the hearer. We will spend the majority of our brainpower puzzling about what makes people tick, and then the majority of our evangelistic energy constructing circumstances and packaging that will connect with and influence people. Evangelism will become more and more concerned with attuning our communication to people’s mindsets, feelings, and desires so that they will perceive the message as relevant to their lives. If conversion ultimately rests with the person, then to the person we must appeal. And if people have kids and like sports, then building a Family Life Center makes great sense.

“In evangelism, the message is the medium!”

However, if conversion is fundamentally an act of God’s Spirit changing a heart through the gospel message itself, our practice of evangelism will trend in a very different direction. We will labor to make the gospel itself clear, rather than appealing to “felt needs.” If what “works” is God’s Spirit working through God’s Word, then we will spend the bulk of our mental energies studying the Scriptures so we can express them accurately, rather than assessing how the elements of our services might connect with people’s various learning styles. We will struggle more over selecting songs with biblically faithful lyrics than over orchestrating an instrumental arrangement that will put people in the right mood.

WHAT ABOUT THE BUILDING?

Does this latter view of conversion mean that things like music, buildings, or our personal charisma don’t matter? Well, yes and no.

They matter insofar as they serve as a platform for communication. Buildings, for example, are good for enabling people to gather together and hear a sermon. So in that sense we need to be sure that circumstantial elements don’t distract from the ministry of God’s Word in its various forms.

But here’s the key: removing distractions does not impart converting grace to anyone. Nor can a certain combination of music, humor, empathy, artistic skill, and sanctuary ambiance bring anyone to Christ. Only the Spirit of God, working through the gospel, can convert sinners and enable them to repent and believe in Jesus. So our concern for the message should far surpass our fretting about the packaging. In evangelism, the message is the medium!

Furthermore, God’s Spirit-empowered gospel can change hearts even when the music is lousy, the speaker is unattractive, the sound system hums, and the sanctuary decor is painfully dated. God sovereignly converts sinners by means of his Word.

GROWTH WITHOUT A GYM

As our church worked through the confusion of the building setback, we noticed something strange. The congregation had grown and people had come to faith in Jesus, even without a gym. We had continued to proclaim God’s Word from the pulpit, in small groups, and in our daily interactions outside the facility walls. And despite our building woes, the Holy Spirit had been at work converting people through that gospel ministry. We hadn’t built it, and yet they had come.

By God’s grace, our congregational vision refocused. We now became more overt in trumpeting expository preaching and gospel proclamation as central to our mission, and central to saving souls. And our building project changed as well. We scrapped the gymnasium plans and designed a new sanctuary and lots of classrooms. We wanted more space for people to hear and study God’s heart-changing Word. Our theology guided our architecture. Our theology of conversion begat our practice of evangelism.

And on September 18, 2011, we celebrated our first worship service in the new sanctuary.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY

What is the moral of the story? That if you have the right theology, God will bless your building project and increase church attendance? Of course not. We cannot manipulate the sovereign Lord.

Is the lesson that it’s wrong for churches to build gyms, or for Christians to organize a church softball league and use it for building relationships with unbelievers? Not at all. I would still love for our children’s and youth ministries to have a gym, and it’s good to build friendships with non-Christians.

Instead, here’s the point: when we understand conversion as a Spirit-wrought, Word-mediated miracle, we will focus our evangelistic resources more and more on articulating the gospel itself than on enhancing the gospel’s appeal and perceived relevance to an unbelieving world.

About the author:

Jeramie Rinne is the senior pastor of South Shore Baptist Church in Hingham, Massachusetts.

By Jonathan Leeman

The Underestimated Pastoral Power of a Proper Doctrine of Conversion

A proper doctrine of conversion will give you pastoral power.

PERSONAL ILLUSTRATION

Let me jump right in with an illustration. I once confessed a wrongful desire to a friend of mine, and I explained that, frustratingly, my theology knew it was wrong, but part of me was tempted to justify it because it felt “woven into the very fabric of my person” and “part of the very wiring of my soul.” Those were the words I used to explain how much the desire felt like me.

My friend, sweetly, simply quoted Ephesians 4 to me: “put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires.” And he emphasized “your old self” like that. Yes, it’s true that such desires may be woven or wired into my very person. You’re old self is corrupt. What did you expect, Jonathan? Those desires, in one sense, are me.

“Wait a second, I have a new self, don’t I? There is an old me, sure, but there is also a new me.”

Ah, but there was good news just around the corner. My friend finished the passage: but “be renewed in the spirit of your minds…and put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” Wait a second, I have a new self, don’t I? There is an old me, sure, but there is also a new me. And this new me is being created…hold on, get this…after the likeness of God.

In short, my friend reminded me of my conversion with a few choice words from Scripture. And where my mood had been melancholic that day, fueled by the frustration of wanting something I couldn’t have, his reminder restored my joy. It gave me hope.

TWO PLACES OF PASTORAL POWER

Do you see how there’s pastoral power in a proper understanding of conversion? In the realities and promises of a new creation life?

1. It gives you the ability to encourage and enliven your brothers and sisters in Christ who are gripped by sin. Maybe it’s an addiction. Maybe it’s a feeling of hatred toward another brother or sister in the church. Maybe it’s an untraceable sense of despair. Whatever. In many such cases, the sin—liar that it is—pretends to be inevitable. It dons the mask of “real” or “authentic” or “just how I feel” or “natural” or even “just.” But a right doctrine of conversion exposes the lie in all such posturing. “Yes, your feelings might be natural, but no, you are bound by it, because Christianity is supernatural. You are free.”

People feel determined by their sin; the Christian doctrine of conversion helps Christians to know that they are not. Even when the fight is long, and every two steps forward seems to be followed by one step backward (or more!), the power of change comes from the recognition of what Christ has done in making a person new.

2. It gives you the ability to assure Christians of their new and different kind of life. Christianity gives the life of the Son, in whose image we are being remade. It’s a life of holiness, love, and unity with God’s people. It’s a life of suffering, but of knowing the hope and power of the resurrection amidst such suffering.

And here’s the amazing thing. Such assurances belong not only to the so-called imperatives of the New Testament: “Go and be holy and united with each other.” They belong to the indicatives: “This is what you are.” There is a new self, and that new self is one with the saints and is holy like the Son.

THE CULTURAL BACKDROP

Now, there is a cultural backdrop to all of this that’s worth recognizing. Our romanticized culture favors the real, the natural, the authentic. Self-discovery and self-expression are our greatest moral acts. And these attitudes have seeped into churches and refashioned our ideas about conversion, membership, and our new identities in Christ. We’re all just seekers, pastors will say. We’re all on our journey. That means you take one step, and then another, and then another.

But what’s missing from the logic of these popular pastoral metaphors is the idea of a decisive break with the past—a rescuing from the domain of darkness; a death and resurrection. A journey of discovery is a vastly differently kind of thing than a burial and a resurrection, an old self and a new self.

Admittedly, journeys do change us. We evolve through journeys. And, truth be told, spiritual growth can feel less like caterpillars and butterflies and more like an evolutionary progression chart. My point is not to say that such language has no points of spiritual connectivity. But we must not forget what the New Testament teaches about the power of the eschaton breaking into history now. New creation now. That’s conversion.

“Bottom line: preach, teach, sing, praise God in prayer, and counsel a proper doctrine of conversion.”

SITTING ACROSS FROM THE ALCOHOLIC

So there you are, sitting across from the alcoholic, the victim of marital infidelity, the ornery deacon who is causing a church split, the young couple who cannot stand singing hymns. What is your task? It’s reminding them that they are Christians.

Perhaps you help them go back to their baptism, like Paul does in Romans 6. They’ve been buried and raised—wow! Do they really want to go on sinning, or look for freedom, or look for the power to forgive, or keep insisting on their own way, just like the world does? How can they? They’ve died to sin, and been raised in newness of life with Christ.

Your pastoral task, one way or another, is to find the words and ask the questions that enable the still-sinful saint to understand what it means to be…now get this…a born again Christian.

Bottom line: preach, teach, sing, praise God in prayer, and counsel a proper doctrine of conversion. There’s underestimated power there. The more your people understand it, the more pastoral power you will have to shepherd them. Not only that, they will possess such power for persuading and equipping one another.

About the author:

Jonathan Leeman, a member of Capitol Hill Baptist Church, is the editorial director for 9Marks and the author of Church Membership: How the World Knows Who Belongs to Jesus and Church Discipline: How the Church Protects the Name of Jesus (both Crossway, April 2012).

By Michael Lawrence

How “Belonging before Believing” Redefines the Church

One of the great insights of the modern world is that John Donne was right and Simon Garfunkel was wrong: I am not a rock; I am not an island.

From who I think I am to what I believe about life and the universe, my beliefs are socially constructed. That doesn’t mean I don’t make independent decisions. It simply means that the social context in which I live largely determines the range of options I can choose from.

What’s more, culture rewards some choices and penalizes others with its approval or disapproval. Sometimes the reward is financial. But far more powerful than material reward is the social, intellectual, and emotional reward of being considered a normal, healthy, well-adjusted member of society. We’re social beings, and so we want to be included in the group.

And this means that, regardless of the objective merits of an idea, some ideas seem more plausible or attractive than others. It’s difficult to believe something that everyone we know thinks is crazy. On the other hand, it’s quite easy to believe something that everyone we know thinks is obviously true. We’re not islands in the stream, we’re a school of fish, and it just makes sense to go with the flow.

THE CHURCH SAYS, “THIS ISN’T AS CRAZY AS YOU THOUGHT”

What happens when you apply these basic insights to the local church and its task of evangelism? All of a sudden, you realize that the local church is more than a preaching station or venue for evangelistic programs. And you see that the task of evangelism is no longer confined to the professionals on staff.

Instead, the entire community becomes a crucial element in the task of commending the gospel. That community becomes the plausible alternative to unbelief. It becomes a sub-culture that demonstrates what it looks like to love and follow Jesus and so love and serve one another. And it does all this as the church body lives out its life together. From public meetings to small group Bible studies, from informal gatherings around the dinner table to purely social events, life together not only reinforces shared belief, it also communicates to a watching non-Christian world, “This isn’t as crazy as you thought, and if you make the leap from unbelief to belief, you won’t be alone.”

In other words, the church becomes a plausibility structure for faith. Make sense?

ONE STEP FURTHER: BELONGING BEFORE BELIEVING

In the last few decades, however, many churches have taken this insight a step further. If seeing a plausible alternative from the outside can help someone move from unbelief to belief, wouldn’t seeing it from the inside be even better? If we want to commend the gospel to non-Christians, what could be more effective than inviting them inside, letting them try it on before they commit to buying it? If the community is the most powerful tool we have, then let’s bring people in, not as outside observers, but as (cautious) insiders participating in our corporate life with us.

The result? “Unbelievers” become “seekers,” rather than non-Christians. They become fellow travelers on the journey with us, just at a different point.

Practically, this means letting unbelievers join everything from the worship band to the after-school tutoring ministry, from ushering to coordinating rides for seniors. Everyone is included; everyone belongs, regardless of belief.

The idea is that, before they know it, not only will they feel like they belong, they will also believe what they belong to, because belonging has made belief plausible.

WHY NOT LET THEM BELONG BEFORE THEY BELIEVE?—THREE REASONS

This is an attractive idea. This is a seemingly effective idea. But it is also a bad idea. Here are three reasons why.

It Confuses Christians

First, it confuses Christians. I pastor a church that for years practiced this idea in informal ways. The result is a collection of insiders (some are formal members, some are not) who all claim to be Christians. The problem is that some are zealous and committed, others seem more interested in being entertained, while still others can’t be bothered to contribute at all. But since they all belong to the family, they’re all nominally followers of Jesus, and we have to come up with other explanations for the differences: “he’s really busy,” “she’s just not into the music,” “their friends aren’t here anymore.” And we have to come up with extra categories like “committed Christians,” “serious Christians,” and “sacrificial Christians” in order to distinguish them from the “run-of-the-mill Christians” and “sort-of Christians.”

“Jesus talked about following him as a radical break with our former way of living. But when we begin to deliberately blur the line, we confuse Christians about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the first place.”

Surely we should expect a range of spiritual maturity in the church, and Christians will sin. But what does it really mean to be a Christian in this context? And what do we do with the awkward statements that Jesus made, like “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50) or “Anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:38)? Jesus talked about following him as a radical break with our former way of living. But when we begin to deliberately blur the line, we confuse Christians about what it means to be a follower of Jesus in the first place.

It Confuses Non-Christians

Second, belonging before believing confuses non-Christians. Not long after I arrived at my church, an anonymous phone call came into the office informing us that one of our leaders was “living in sin” in the old-fashioned sense of that phrase. When we investigated, it turned out to be true.

In one sense, that wasn’t the biggest problem. Again, Christians fall into sin, even grievous sin.

The real problem, from a pastoral standpoint, occurred when this person was confronted. The response was striking: “I didn’t sign up for this! If I’d known this is what would happen, I would never have joined in the first place.” (Ironically, you can have a culture of belonging before believing and still have formal membership, as we did.)

Apparently, for this individual, being a Christian wasn’t about obeying Jesus. And the gospel wasn’t about repenting and believing. Instead, it was about belonging to our family, being accepted, and having the opportunity to express your own gifts and interests. Accountability certainly didn’t enter into the equation, and neither did commitment. Before we could even talk about it, that leader had left.

When non-Christians are never told that they are non-Christians, but are instead taught to think of themselves as “fellow travelers,” “seekers,” or “people at different stages of the same journey,” it’s easy for them to become confused about what it really means to be a Christian, and what it looks like to trust in the gospel. The desire to belong to a wonderful family of people can too easily lead someone to sign up for Jesus’ community, but never really sign on to Jesus’ command to repent and believe.

It Fundamentally Redefines the Local Church

Third, belonging before believing fundamentally redefines the local church. The local church is a community, and at the end of the day, a community is defined, not by its documents, buildings, or programs, but by its people—and a people whose lives participate in new creation realities of love and holiness, thereby creating new plausibility structures.

That’s what Jesus taught. “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35).

That’s what Paul taught. “Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:6-7). And elsewhere: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14).

That’s what Peter taught. “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1 Pet. 2:12).

That’s what John taught. “This is how we know we are in him. Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:5-6).

This is the power of the church’s witness to Christ, according to the New Testament. When the world looks at the church, of course it sees sinners. But that’s not all it sees. It sees sinners whose lives are being radically transformed by the good news of the gospel. It sees sinners whose love for one another cannot be explained by anything other than the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It sees sinners who not only love each other, but who love God through Jesus Christ, and whose lives display that love in holiness and truth.

To return to where we began, the church can be a plausibility structure for faith only if consists of people who have faith.

All of that changes when the church becomes the community of those who are merely on a journey together. For many, the outcome of the journey is unclear and uncertain. For others, the journey has come to a halt before the final destination is reached. For still others, the goal of salvation has been found. But the community itself is not a witness to the truth of Jesus Christ and his gospel. It can’t be if you can belong before you believe.

Instead, the community is merely a witness to itself, its warmth, openness, and inclusiveness. But what, in the end, is so unique and compelling about that? There are many warm and open communities, sub-cultures if you will, within the city of Portland, where I live. But they don’t testify to Jesus. Only the local church can do that. And even then, the church can do that only if you must believe in order to belong.

In short, the philosophy of belonging before belief fundamentally redefines the church, which in the long run undermines the power of the church’s witness.

A BETTER IDEA

Belonging before believing is a bad idea. A better idea is what Jesus described in John 13: a community that profoundly believes the gospel so that its life is marked by a love for one another. Such a community, he said, will provoke those on the outside not only to recognize they are outside, but to desire to come in.

The image that comes to mind is of a bakery on a cold, snowy day. Whiffs of delicious bread and hot chocolate occasionally waft outside. And a child has his nose pressed against the window pane. That glass is a barrier. Without it, the warmth and delicious smells would soon disperse in the cold wind, and no one would know there was anything good to be found there. But it’s a transparent barrier, allowing that child to see the good things inside and invite him in. And there is a way in, a narrow door that he must walk through. Until he does, he can see and appreciate what’s inside, but it’s not his to enjoy. Once he walks through, it’s his for the asking.

When non-Christians encounter your church it should be like standing at that window, not staring blankly at a brick wall. They should feel the warmth of your love, as you welcome them and engage them as people made in the image of God. They should see the depth of relationships, as they witness people who have no reason to care for one another go out of their way to serve. They should taste the richness of the gospel, as God’s word is preached and taught in a manner that connects with their lives. And they should hear the inviting sounds of a joyful community, as they listen to the praises and prayers of a people who worship our crucified and risen Lord.

“Like a bakery that pumps the delicious smell of its bread outside, publicly celebrate the stories of grace and transformation that are happening in your midst.”

So go out of your way to create a community that welcomes the outsider. Give thought to the language you use. Be deliberate in your hospitality. And be strategic in your transparency. Like a bakery that pumps the delicious smell of its bread outside, publicly celebrate the stories of grace and transformation that are happening in your midst. And then, when you’ve done all else, make the gospel clear and invite people to respond to it in repentance and faith. Call them, not to walk an aisle, but to enter through the narrow door, and join with you in the riches of faith in the gospel.

If the church is to display the good things of the gospel, the barrier of belief must not be removed, for it is that shared belief on display that works most powerfully to invite people in.

About the author:

Michael Lawrence is senior pastor of Hinson Baptist Church in Portland Oregon and is the author of Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church: A Guide for Ministry (Crossway, 2010).

By Shai Linne

Concepts of Conversion in the Inner City

What do people in America’s inner cities think about conversion?

I’m not referring the geographic center of cities, but to the urban areas that are often riddled by crime and characterized by social and economic blight. From west Philadelphia to Chicago’s south side; from the Flatbush section of Brooklyn to Watts in Los Angeles; from Anacostia in southeast Washington D.C. to the north side of St. Louis—what are the common understandings about how one becomes a Christian?

TOUGH QUESTION

In some ways, this is a difficult question to answer, because no two inner cities are exactly the same. There are common elements, but each inner city possesses a wide range of worldviews, cultures, education levels, and theological backgrounds.

Also, over the past forty-plus years since the beginning of the civil rights movement, the church’s influence over the minds, life philosophies, and values of many people in the “hood” has steadily diminished, especially over the young men. People don’t view the church as a viable option for addressing the needs and crises that press in upon them. Christianity is often seen as either “grandmom’s religion” or something for drug addicts and the incarcerated when they hit rock bottom. In place of the church, a wide range of religions and non-Christian cults have literally grabbed the mic. Hip-hop culture, too, has been used as a pipeline through which unbiblical ideologies flow into the hearts and minds of many.

“All that to say, if you were to explore the outdoor areas of most inner-cities, aside from the ubiquitous church buildings and storefronts, you may not see or hear much evidence of Christian thought or influence.”

All that to say, if you were to explore the outdoor areas of most inner-cities, aside from the ubiquitous church buildings and storefronts, you may not see or hear much evidence of Christian thought or influence.

NON-CHRISTIAN CULTS

You will find groups such as the Nation of Islam, Hebrew Israelites, and The Five Percent Nation having a very public presence, often preaching or selling their literature on the corner. All of these groups stress the political and socio-economic empowerment of African-Americans and have been seen by many young African-American men as an attractive alternative to traditional Christianity.

As religions, these groups are works-based, and they each focus on the ethnic heritage of African-Americans as a basis for divine privilege, to the exclusion of other ethnicities. They use different writings and “holy books” to justify their ethnocentrism, but this is precisely what they emphasize. Each of these three groups has surfaced as a religious response to the effects of the systemic oppression that find myriad expression in their neighborhoods. If you were to ask them how someone converts to “Christianity,” as they understand it, they would say that someone would have to make a choice and then follow the rules. No divine action is necessary.

Jehovah’s Witnesses also have a strong presence in many inner cities. They would see participating in Kingdom Hall activities, refraining from celebrating holidays, and aggressively going door-to-door and “evangelizing” on the street as evidence of conversion. Again, it would be a matter of the individual making a conscious choice to conform to external standards of behavior. Because these are not Christian groups, they obviously fall short of a biblical understanding of conversion.

CHURCH IN THE ’HOOD

If you were to leave the public square for the many storefronts and church buildings, you would find a wide range of Christian denominations. Many of these groups, including the Church of God in Christ, the Apostolic Church, and the Assemblies of God, are rooted in Pentecostalism. There is a wide range of beliefs about conversion within these groups. In some of them, there is the false notion of conversion as a baptism of the Holy Spirit, which the prospective believer must “tarry” for and will ultimately be evidenced by speaking in tongues. In some of these churches, however, you will find pastors who teach the true gospel and who wholeheartedly denounce the unbiblical excesses of other Pentecostals.

Additionally, you will find churches belonging to mainline denominations. The most common of these are African-Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) churches, as well as certain Baptist denominations. These churches tend to stress political and social activism, so they avoid drawing sharp doctrinal lines for the sake of cooperating with others who share their social justice goals. They may even deny the necessity of a personal conversion to Christianity for salvation.

There are also a number of broadly evangelical churches that range from non-denominational with a Word of Faith/prosperity gospel emphasis to more theologically conservative Baptist and independent Bible churches. In both cases, Billy Graham’s influence is evident. They view conversion as a “decision for Christ” or “accepting Christ into your heart,” usually accompanied by an altar call and a “sinner’s prayer.”

HOPE FOR THE INNER CITY?

From this brief survey of the urban theological landscape, it may seem like there is much to be discouraged by. However, in my travels as a Christian Hip-hop artist, I’ve observed encouraging movements happening in many of these areas. Many, especially younger people, are embracing the doctrines of grace, which emphasize the sovereign work of God in salvation. Many would rightly say that conversion is a gracious act of God by which he transfers undeserving sinners from darkness to light through the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (1 Pet. 2:9, Jn. 3:8, Tit. 3:5). This grace is received by faith in Jesus Christ alone (Acts 26:18, Rom. 5:2). A good number of these young people from the inner cities of places like Memphis, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Houston are enrolling in reformed Bible colleges and seminaries, with desires to plant indigenous churches in the neighborhoods in which they grew up.

We may not see the fruit of these movements for years to come, but the seeds are certainly being planted—often through the unlikely vehicle of Christian hip-hop music! Surely God uses the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. Join me in praising God for what he’s already done and in praying that he would raise up a generation of pastors and church planters who would take the gospel to the ’hood as they boldly and lovingly proclaim that, “Salvation is of the Lord!” (Jonah 2:9).

About the author:

Shai Linne is a nationally known recording artist. His most recent album is The Attributes of God (Lampmode, 2011). He and his wife Blair are members of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Testimonies of the Underestimated Gospel

9Marks asked all the T4G plenary and break-out speakers and panelists to provide us with a one sentence answer to this question:

What were the human means and instruments of your conversion?

Thabiti Anyabwile: I was converted during the preaching of Exodus 32 in a Sunday morning worship service.

Matt Chandler: I was converted by the witness of a good friend.

Mark Dever: I was converted by reading the New Testament and by the witness of Christian friends.

Kevin DeYoung: I was converted through the instruction of my parents and by the sitting under the preaching of the word Sunday after Sunday from the time I was born.

Ligon Duncan: My mother and two faithful, Bible-believing, gospel-preaching pastors were the Spirit’s primary instruments in quickening me to repentance unto life and saving faith in Christ.

Simon Gathercole: I went along regularly to a friendly Christian group at my boarding school, where eventually I heard a talk on Revelation 3:20 and knew Jesus was speaking to me.

Greg Gilbert: I was converted by hearing a sermon from a visiting preacher at my church when I was nine years old.

J.D. Greear: I was converted through the faithful teaching of a biblical church, the consistent witness of my parents, and a crisis moment regarding the assurance of my salvation brought on by my Sunday School teacher.

Dave Harvey: While the day and hour of my conversion is unknown to me, the gospel proclamation of an open-air preacher, the witness of Christian friends, and the life of a Christian community all played prominent roles in my story.

Michael Lawrence: I was converted by hearing the gospel from my mother and faithful Sunday School teachers. 

C.J. Mahaney: As an eighteen-year-old immersed in the drug culture, God sent a newly-converted friend to share the gospel with me; by the grace of God I put my trust in Jesus Christ and his death on the cross for my sins and was gloriously saved from the wrath of God I richly deserved.

Mike McKinley: I was converted as an eleven-year-old when I heard the gospel for the first time from a Sunday School teacher.

Albert Mohler: I was converted by the faithful preaching of the gospel by a pastor, and by the constant gospel encouragement of my parents.

Russell Moore: I came to know Christ as an adolescent, walking and looking up at the stars on the road outside my house in Biloxi, Mississippi, while reflecting on the gospel I heard preached and taught in my home congregation, Woolmarket Baptist Church.

Darrin Patrick: I was converted by reading the Bible and hanging out with some guys who were like me, but not like me.

John Piper: Since I have no memory of the first time I trusted Christ, I take my mother’s word for it that my sister had spoken to me at the age of six concerning my soul, and I came to my mother who knelt with me at a motel in Florida where I received the Lord Jesus and put my faith in him.

David Platt: The Lord converted me through the influence of Bible-believing parents and a Bible-teaching church.

Jeff Purswell: The compelling witness of a community of believers at Berry College prepared me to respond to the gospel that I had long heard but by turns ignored and doubted.

Matt Schmucker: I was converted during my senior year at the University of Maryland through hearing an open-air preacher after listening to him for three years.

Mack Stiles: While pursuing what passions and pleasures I could scrape out in the world, I landed in a cheap hotel at a skiing and mountain climbing school in Zermatt, Switzerland where God used a fellow seventeen-year-old named Robert Smith to share not only the gospel but his life with me; after reading a tract which Robert had given me (from “The Cross and the Switchblade”) I bowed my knee to Christ in Robert’s room above a bar, and from then to this day have called Jesus my Savior, Lord, and Hope of the world.

Carl Trueman: I was converted through the witness of a charismatic friend, hearing Billy Graham preach, and reading Jim Packer.

Peter Williams: My parents explained and modeled the gospel, and public preaching particularly drove it home for me even before I was a teenager.

Learn more about the April 2012 Together for the Gospel conference here.

By Mike McKinley

Six Ways to Give Your People False Assurance

As a a pastor, I interact with a lot of people who struggle to have confidence in the authenticity of their conversion. To their mind, their sin clings closely and their failings are always at hand. Most of the time, I find that these are faithful brothers and sisters who need comfort and reassurance.

But there’s another group of people in many of our churches that are much more worrisome: those with a firm but unfounded belief that they are genuinely converted. Perhaps you know they type. They know the right words. They stay free from scandalous public sin. And they are moral people. But they have no true fruit, no evidence that God’s converting Spirit is at work within them. And oftentimes there is an untreated area of secret sin.

SIX WAYS PASTORS FOSTER FALSE ASSURANCE

These people are hard to reach—it’s like they’ve been inoculated to the gospel. They think they already have what they most need, and so they aren’t looking for anything more! And if there is an area of hidden sin, they’ve long made peace with it.

Sadly, our churches are at least partly to blame for their presence in our midst. Allow me to suggest six ways that we pastors may inadvertently help to foster false assurance in people like this.

1. Assume the Gospel

It’s easy to assume that the people in our churches understand and believe the gospel. After all, they are in church on a Sunday morning. But the fact is, many of our churches have taken the message and the congregation’s understanding of it for granted. As a result, our churches are full of people who may understand some of the implications of the gospel (e.g., how to be a better husband; how to manage your anger) and live moral lives without appropriating the gospel for themselves.

This is spiritually deadly because moral lives might be the evidence of someone’s faith in the gospel, but they also might be the evidence of self-righteousness and Phariseeism. It’s surely right to emphasize that the faith which justifies is never alone, that works always accompany true faith. But we must first emphasize that we are justified by faith alone, and emphasize this over and over again, else the works which you see will not be the works of a saving justification. When the gospel is not made clear, when the Way to heaven and the highway to hell are not clearly pointed out by the preacher, then people will assume that their morality or their church attendance gives them grounds for assurance.

In short, don’t preach moralism. Ever. Preach the gospel every week. And then, with the indicatives of the gospel firmly in place, preach the imperatives that necessarily follow.

2. Give Them a Superficial View of Sin

The Bible teaches us that sin is not just something that we do, it’s who we are in our fallen state. The Scriptures teach us that we are all spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1-2), slaves to sin (John 8:34), guilty of breaking the entirety of the law of God (Jas. 2:10), and condemned to experience God’s righteous wrath (Rom. 1:18). We are sinners through and through.

“In short, don’t preach moralism. Ever. Preach the gospel every week. And then, with the indicatives of the gospel firmly in place, preach the imperatives that necessarily follow.”

People with unfounded assurance often misunderstand sin. If sin is merely a matter of external and observable behaviors, then with some effort and discipline they can solve their own problems. But if we can compel them to wrestle regularly with the biblical teaching about their sin, then they will be forced to see their need for the new birth and a salvation that comes from outside of their own person.

3. Treat Church Membership and Discipline Casually

Membership in a local congregation is meant to give believers assurance of their salvation. It’s a corporate seal of approval on someone’s claim to be a Christian. When a congregation examines someone’s profession of faith and way of living and then baptizes that person and admits them to the Lord’s Table, the church is saying, “As far as we can tell, and with the power and wisdom given to us by Christ, you are one of us.” On the flip side of the coin, when a church excommunicates someone, they are taking away that seal of approval. The congregation is telling the individual that his or her actions have undermined the credibility of their profession of faith and the basis of their assurance.

“How many people are going to hell because their lazily-overseen church membership gave them false confidence?”

But when a church is promiscuous with its membership, when it allows people who do not attend the church to maintain their membership, it fosters false assurance. How many people are going to hell because their lazily-overseen church membership gave them false confidence?

4. Teach Them to Base their Assurance on a Past External Action.

As we’ve already noted, the gospel demands a response from us. And churches and evangelistic programs have sometimes found it helpful to present some method for people to express their newfound commitment to Christ. Some offer people with the chance to say a “Sinner’s Prayer.” Others offer them with the chance to walk the aisle on Sunday or fill out a response card. And those external actions may indeed be a genuine response to the converting work of the Spirit.

But they can also be deceptive. It is possible to pray a prayer, walk an aisle, and sign a card and still be completely lost in your sins. So if we encourage people to have assurance based on some sort of external activity that can be performed quite apart from the new birth, we put them in grave spiritual danger. How many people are walking around completely lost, but sure they are going to heaven because they prayed a prayer once as a child?

5. Don’t Connect Justification and Sanctification for your People.

In a well-motivated effort to magnify the free grace of God, it is possible to teach the truth of justification by faith alone through Christ alone without connecting all of the dots for our hearers. But the teaching of Scripture is that the justifying work of Christ will always produce the fruit of righteousness in the lives of believers, as I said earlier (for just one example, see the logic of Romans 6:1-14).

A disconnect between justification and sanctification is very dangerous for believers. It undermines their understanding of the need for personal holiness and their motivation for loving God with their obedience. But it is doubly dangerous for those who have false assurance, because it encourages them to think that it is possible to live in open rebellion against God and still be righteous in his sight.

6. Teach Them to Ignore the Bible’s Warnings.

The Scriptures are full of dire warnings to those who would embrace sin and/or leave the faith (e.g., Matt. 5:27-30, Heb. 6:1-6). In our efforts to clearly teach God’s sovereign care for his people, it is possible to undermine the force of these warnings by giving the impression that they don’t apply to believers.

But those warnings are in the Scriptures for a purpose. They are true and they are one of God’s ways of keeping his people from wandering away. A wise pastor will press home the gravity of sin and apostasy and call all of his hearers to endure in the faith.

About the author:

Mike McKinley is the senior pastor of Guilford Baptist Church in Sterling, Virginia and is the author, most recently, of Am I Really a Christian? (Crossway, 2011).

Reviewed by Zach Schlegel

Book Review: Finally Alive

John Piper, Finally Alive. Christian Focus, 2009. 208 pages. $14.99

The last time I visited my hometown, I received a history lesson from an old family friend at the dinner table. She told us how two churches in our town had multiplied into six over the past fifty years. That might sound like a pretty impressive church planting strategy for a town of 2,000 people, at least until you discover that all this “growth” was due to a number of church-splits. The splits were the result of bitter feuds between families, a stubborn refusal to forgive, and quarrels exploding well beyond the walls of the church.

As I listened to this wise and godly woman rehearse a sad history, it was clear that the pain of those experiences ran deep. She was not angry or bitter, but she was bewildered by how people who claim to bear the name of Christ could be so nasty to each other.

If I could go back in time to ask the church leaders and others involved in these church splits, “Are you born again?” my guess is they’d answer, “Of course!” But is this the way “born again” people treat each other?

Didn’t Jesus say that the way that the world would know we are his disciples is by how we love each other (John 13:34-35)? What then does it mean to be born again? What difference does it make for an individual Christian? For a church?

In his 192-page book Finally Alive, John Piper sets out to answer those questions as a careful theologian and experienced pastor. In many respects, the book is one I’d recommend for anyone who claims to follow Christ. But what I’d like to do here is to think specifically about how this can be a helpful book for pastors and church leaders.

WHY CHURCH LEADERS SHOULD READ THIS BOOK

I may not be able to go back in time to talk to those church leaders from my hometown, but if I could, I might send them the following letter with a copy of Finally Alive:

Dear Church Leader,

I’m sorry to hear about the challenges you’re facing right now. Caring for the church of God is not something for the faint of heart, but it is without a doubt an amazing privilege! I’ve included a book with this letter that I hope you’ll take the time to carefully read in light of the difficulties your church is facing.

If you’re like me when facing a problem, it’s easy to focus first on circumstances rather than theology. You’ll notice the book I’ve sent you is not a practical “how-to” guide but rather a book focusing on the theological idea of being born again. Why might this be a useful resource for you and your church right now?

It explains what the new birth is and why it’s necessary.

Piper explains, “Most people do not know what is really wrong with them. One way to help them make a true and terrible and hopeful diagnosis is to show them the kind of remedy God has provided, namely the new birth” (20). Jesus didn’t say we needed a little moral tidying up. He said, “No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.” He provides a radical remedy for a radical problem.

Teaching our churches the biblical truth of the new birth motivates us to let go of petty differences because we see the real problem more clearly. It also humbles us because we’re reminded that, apart from the mercy of God, his wrath would remain on us (John 3:36). I pray that considering these truths would move you and your congregation to be humble, forgiving, and united.

It helps clarify what a Christian is.

Jesus is no fan of hypocrisy. That’s why he called the religious leaders “serpents” and a “brood of vipers” when they lied about God with their hypocrisy. What characterizes a true Christian, as opposed to a hypocrite? In chapters 10 to 13, Piper looks at John’s first epistle to show that a Christian loves others, obeys God, and believes the truth about Jesus. We’ll do none of these things perfectly this side of heaven, but all of them are necessary characteristics of one who is born again. A Christian loves Jesus more than his or her sin. When a Christian is confronted about sin, he or she doesn’t stubbornly hold on to it, he or she repents.

A biblical understanding of the new birth demands that we first examine ourselves as leaders, then encourage our congregation to do the same. Piper follows the Bible’s example in calling those who bear the name of Christ to either follow him faithfully or stop pretending and dragging his name through the mud.

That might seem harsh or unloving, but just the opposite is true. If we see a friend in danger, we warn them because we love them. Better is open rebuke than hidden love (Prov. 27:5).

It models how to lead with love and truth.

The new birth can be unsettling. It confronts us with our dire condition and our inability to fix things on our own. But as you read the book (and I hope you do) you’ll be led by a wise pastor who sets a good example for us to follow. He writes, “I do not want to cause tender souls any unnecessary distress. And I do not want to give false hope to those who have confused morality or religion for spiritual life” (27).

Let him guide you in his example of warning and encouraging. But also, follow his example of depending on God. When we see the truth about the new birth, it shapes the way we preach, pray, counsel, and lead others because we realize we are dependent on him to do the work.

I pray God would use the truth about the new birth to give your congregation the humility, love, and unity that brings honor to his name. I pray he gives new birth to any among your congregation who are still dead in sin. And I pray that as you read this book, you will be encouraged, strengthened, and awed by the God who gives new life and grows churches in unity and love.

Your friend,

Zach

About the author:

Zach Schlegel is an assistant pastor of Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, DC.

Reviewed by Nicholas Piotrowski

Book Review: 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law

Thomas R. Schreiner, 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law. Kregel, 2010. 256 pages. $17.99

I expect that many Christians might not think that a book with the title 40 Questions about Christians and Biblical Law would be that helpful for their daily Christian lives. After all, the law is not the most enticing subject. Further, we are “not under the law” as members of the new covenant, right?

Well-known and widely-respected New Testament scholar Thomas Schreiner would beg to differ.

Do you want to interpret the Bible rightly? Comprehend justification? Understand what parts of the law do apply to your life? Then you need to understand the law. Further, recent controversies over interpreting Paul’s letters have made understanding the law important on still another level (see my review of Barcley and Duncan’s Gospel Clarity in this issue of the 9Marks Journal).

FORTY QUESTIONS IN A USEFUL FORMAT

To get at these kinds of issues, Schreiner asks forty questions that commonly emerge around the law. The questions are arranged into five parts: the law in the Old Testament, in Paul, in the Gospels and Acts, in the General Epistles, and in contemporary debates.

Each question is exegetically answered in two to six pages, making the book a very accessible resource for specific topics or texts. Moreover, each answer ends with a summary for quick reference and a handful of reflection questions for those who want to linger a bit longer over the issues. Footnotes throughout and an annotated bibliography in the back also point readers to helpful sources for further inquiry.

COMMENDATION AND CRITIQUE

Yet more than just dropping in and out of the book, pastors, students, and laypeople with an interest in biblical theology will benefit from a cover-to-cover read. Schreiner’s total presentation of the law holds together well. By and large, the questions are arranged in logical order. For example, it is good that question 40, “What Role Does the Law Have in Preaching?”, is the last one. I do not think a pastor could jump to it and understand all that Schreiner is trying to communicate without first wading through at least some of the book’s previous content.

Also, on a theological level, I commend Schreiner for his redemptive-historical presentation of the law—another example of the book’s holistic and coherent scope—and attention to Christological detail.

Readers interested in recent debates over Paul will also be interested in this volume. It becomes clear early on that Schreiner has such debates at the fore of his writing agenda; the subsection called “Questions Related to the New Perspective” occupies questions 4 through 8. It is clear where Schreiner comes down on the issues: “major planks of the New Perspective reading of Paul are flawed” (39). Additionally, the New Perspective comes up several times in the subsection called “Questions Related to the Role of the Law in the Christian Life” and, of course, pervades the subsection called “Questions Related to Justification.”

This is no critique; the New Perspective is an important topic, one particularly warranted in a detailed look at biblical law. In all, more than half of the book is devoted to Paul, and so New Perspective issues weave in and out of questions 4 through 25.

What is lost in the helpful emphasis on Paul, however, is the law in the Old Testament. Only two questions, comprising a total of five pages, are devoted to the law in the Old Testament. Less than 3 percent of the book, therefore, is given to the texts that comprise the vast majority of the Bible.

So while I praise Schreiner for his redemptive-historical understanding of the law, there seems to be an imbalance in his treatment of law throughout Scripture. For example, the law dominates Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Yet while these books are looked back on in considering the law in the New Testament, there is no sustained focus on them. It is as though they merely serve as context or foil for the New Testament. But they are much more than that, even for the Christian’s life (which is the focus of the book’s title). For example, how is Deuteronomy “not an idle word, but indeed [our] very life” (Deut 32:47)? Or, in what manner are Christians to “keep [God’s] law continually” (cf. Ps 119:44)? To be sure, Schreiner has provided the tools for readers to arrive at answers to such questions. I merely make the point to encourage readers to continue to think about questions of the law and some helpful directions to do just that.

The law is also often spoken of in the Psalms, yet Schreiner gives us little outside of Psalm 119. The prophets are concerned with the law as well, and deserve more attention than the occasional backward glance. If Schreiner devoted more attention to the Old Testament, I cannot help but think his polemic against the New Perspective would have been more effective.

USEFUL FOR BOTH REFERENCE AND CAREFUL MEDITATION

This critique notwithstanding, pastors, students and laypeople will benefit from Schreiner’s careful exegesis, both as a reference book and as a detailed meditation of the place of the law in biblical theology. And, of course, anyone interested in the latest debates over Paul will want to hear how Schreiner weighs in.

About the author:

Nicholas Piotrowski is Professor of Biblical Studies at Crossroads Bible College, Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a member of Walnut Grove Chapel.

Reviewed by Nicholas Piotrowski

Book Review: Gospel Clarity: Challenging the New Perspective on Paul

William B. Barcley with J. Ligon Duncan, Gospel Clarity: Challenging the New Perspective on Paul. EP Books, 2010. 190 pages. $14.99

When will it become clear to the geocentrists?”

So asks N. T. Wright in his book Justification, likening those who hold the “old perspective” on Paul’s gospel to anyone who insists that the sun revolves around the earth because that’s what they see looking up in the sky (Justification, 95).

THE COPERNICAN ANGST OF N. T. WRIGHT

In the face of the heliocentric challenge, the geocentrist just shouts louder: “Look there: the sun is moving up, over, and down!” The heliocentrist, of course, is looking at the same evidence that everyone has been looking at for millennia, but he also knows that a new perspective is needed.

In the same way, Wright has been arguing that we need a new perspective on what St. Paul really said. We are reading the same Paul we’ve had for millennia, but when you situate him in the context of what we now know about Second Temple Judaism and not medieval Europe, and when you read him in light of his own larger vision of the biblical covenants, the true meaning of righteousness and justification emerge.

A GRACIOUS, INCISIVE REBUTTAL OF THE NEW PERSPECTIVE ON PAUL

To be sure, Wright is justified in his exasperation with those who merely point to texts and say “See!” as though there is some large swath of Paul’s teachings Wright has never read. That is why William B. Barcley’s latest work, with Ligon Duncan, Gospel Clarity: Challenging the New Perspective on Paul, is very welcome. Barcley and Duncan do not point and shout. Nor do they exclusively consider Wright’s writings. Instead, they evaluate the much larger canopy of the new perspectives on Paul and the alleged first-century Jewish context that informs it before getting into what Paul really said.

For pastors who do not have the time to search out the many streams and tributaries of this river, Barcley and Duncan provide a concise yet thorough guided tour. Only then do they weigh in with their critique of Wright and company. Therefore, their conclusions are informed, balanced and weighty.

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

Barcley and Duncan begin by providing a very accessible overview of the “New Perspective on Paul” and compare it to the “Reformed Perspective on Paul” (chs. 1 and 2). The rest of the book is then devoted to understanding and evaluating three contemporary scholars: E. P. Sanders’ work on Second Temple Judaism (ch. 3), James D. G. Dunn’s understanding of “the law” (ch. 4) and N. T. Wright’s narrative reading of the Bible and definition of justification (chs. 5 and 6). I’ll leave it to the reader to inquire into chapters 1 and 2.[3] Here I will summarize what I find to be Barcley and Duncan’s important contributions to Pauline scholarship in their evaluation of Sanders, Dunn, and Wright.

Exposition and Evaluation of E.P. Sanders’ Work

Sanders’ 1977 book Paul and Palestinian Judaism was a landmark on several levels, not least in its summary of the Jewish conceptual environment in which Paul was reared, educated, converted, and would eventually preach. Sanders contends that first-century Judaism was marked by a “covenantal nomism”: an understanding of Israel’s status before God based on grace in which law-keeping followed grace out of thankfulness and as a means to maintain membership within the community of God’s elect. This is significant because Reformed theologians have read Paul as the champion of a salvation by grace in the face of legalism. If, however, first-century Judaism was not legalistic, then the Reformed reading is misguided and a new perspective is needed.

Barcley and Duncan bring three lines of argument against this historiography. First, they evaluate a handful of Second Temple Jewish texts and the work of scholars who dissent from Sanders. They conclude that first-century Judaism was more legalistic than Sanders’ definition allows. Next, Barcley and Duncan contend that regardless of the name applied to it, any soteriology that incorporates good works into it (as the way in or the way to stay in) is still semi-Pelagian. And finally, the authors do not want to allow an historical reconstruction to dominate their interpretation. Paul’s own words should tell us with whom he battled.[4] When they do, texts like Romans 3:27–4:8, Romans 9:30–10:8 and Philippians 3:2–11 show that Paul’s theological foil was legalistic, regardless of what the rest of the first-century landscape may have looked like.

Exposition and Evaluation of Dunn and Wright’s Work

Two very influential scholars have built upon Sanders’ covenantal nomism and have provided new definitions for key Pauline terms: “works of the Law” and “justification.” Dunn (followed by Wright) argues that “works of the Law” in Paul does not mean a program whereby sinners earn their status before God. First-century Judaism was not legalistic after all, as the theory goes. Instead, “works of the Law” are ethnic identity badges that sequester pure Israel away from the unrighteous Gentile world.

Paul’s chief concern in Galatians and Romans, therefore, was not to establish how sinners could be in the right with God, but why such barriers must come down in order to incorporate all whom God has called to be his people—Jew and Gentile. In short, Paul does not look up but out. His concerns are horizontal not vertical. The question on the table is not how can sinners stand before God but how uncircumcised Gentiles can sit with Sabbath-keeping Jews.

Barcley and Duncan concede that this is where the new perspective on Paul is probably at its strongest, but where it also presents us with a false dichotomy. Must we read Paul as an evangelist or a churchman? Does he care about soteriology or ecclesiology? Are the concerns of reconciliation with God and reconciliation with each other even that far removed? Barcley and Duncan contend that Dunn’s definition of “the works of the Law” (and therefore the false dichotomy) is the result of misreading the relationship between the biblical covenants. Dunn flattens the covenants without giving due credence to the covenant of works—under which Adam could have, yes, earned salvation for himself and his posterity had he kept God’s command. While the Mosaic covenant is indeed gracious, given under the auspices of the covenant of grace made with Abraham, it nonetheless “contains the principle of the covenant of works” (84). It “re-exhibits” the covenant of works for the purpose of pointing sinners to the one who would succeed where Adam and Israel failed: the Lord Jesus Christ. It does, therefore, teach sinners that salvation indeed must be earned and that we cannot earn it ourselves.

Paul’s concern with the “works of the Law,” then, is firstly vertical. One’s relationship to the law acts as a badge that defines one’s relationship with the God of the covenant. Thus, the gospel which people need describes how to be reconciled to God—how to be declared righteous before him. The good news is that Jesus Christ was the perfect covenant head. Additions to Christ’s active obedience through one’s own merits (“works of the Law”) is, therefore, what Paul opposes.

Now we have come full circle. As Dunn misunderstands the relationship between the covenants with Adam, Abraham, and Israel, he equally misunderstands the role of the law in Paul’s theology.

Ironically, it is over this very point—how Paul understood the OT covenants—that the disagreement between Wright and Barcley/Duncan comes to a head. It is ironic because Wright argues that the strength of his reading of Paul is precisely in his account of the covenant. According to Wright, the covenant with Abraham, from which the entire Old Testament takes its cue, was God’s plan to set the world back to pre-fall Edenic conditions which involves creating one people out of all the nations (Gen. 12:1–3). It is a glorious plan—one that Barcley and Duncan certainly promote. The problem is that a covenant is not a plan, it’s an agreement. The Abrahamic covenant, then, is God’s agreement with Israel, though surely the nations benefit from that agreement when God makes good on his end of the agreement (Gen. 12:3).

In other words, Wright is right on the plan but wrong to equate the plan with the covenant. The covenant is part of the plan, not the plan itself. Narrowly speaking, the covenant with Abraham was the matrix of the relationship between God and Israel. And, as mentioned above, that covenant relationship is further defined by the addition of the Mosaic covenant which “re-exibits” the covenant of works. This is not a medieval imposition, but ancient Near-Eastern covenantal logic.

Wright’s novel reading of the Abrahamic covenant also enables him to redefine justification and reject the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. This is where many critiques of the new perspective begin. But that will not do because, as Barcley and Duncan note (109, 111), Wright’s understanding of justification fits within his larger covenantal narrative reading of the whole Bible. Thus, one cannot engage with Wright on these issues unless it’s on the level of the metanarrative.

So, because Barcley and Duncan have first considered first-century Judaism, and then the larger covenantal logic for understanding the law within Wright’s narrative framework for reading Paul, their critique carries weight. In short, to Wright, the problem in need of resolution in Israel’s story is the way in which they are ruled by Gentiles in the first century. The forces of evil are opposed to the kingdom of God. Jesus triumphs at this very point and his now-oppressed people will be vindicated (Wright’s gloss on “justified”) on the last day for their lives that overcome evil with good. Barcley and Duncan’s primary contention with this reading—as might be expected given their understanding of the covenants and the law—is that “the primary problem for Paul in seeking to carry out his task as the ‘apostle to the Gentiles’ is that God is the enemy,” not other people (117).

Human beings in their sin are cut off from God. They have become God’s enemies (Rom. 5:9–10; 11:28). This was one of the things that Saul of Tarsus came to recognize on the road to Damascus when the ‘Lord’ said to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Saul had believed that he was among ‘true Israel,’ zealous for Torah, devoted to doing God’s work. He was God’s friend. But he came to see that he was God’s enemy, as is true of all Jews who reject Christ (Rom. 11:28). The solution to the problem, then, is that individual human beings must be reconciled to God, and this happens only as they repent of sin and trust in Christ to save them. When they do this, they are ‘justified’, declared to be in right relationship with God, and thus have peace (reconciliation) with God (Rom. 5:1). (117)

Thus, “[s]alvation in the New Testament is first and foremost salvation from the wrath of God” (118), not from the (broadly and vaguely defined) forces of evil. To arrive at this point one’s narrative reading of “God’s plan” must see problems that predate Abraham.

Human beings were created to glorify and delight in God. This requires fellowship with God, the precise state that Adam and Eve enjoyed. But their sin ruptured that fellowship. God had warned them, ‘in the day that you eat of [the tree of the knowledge of good and evil] you shall surely die’ (Gen. 2:17). This death, of course, was not immediate physical death—they lived on earth many years after their sin. It was primarily spiritual death—separation from God, under God’s condemnation—which was also the cause of later physical death. If there is a fundamental ‘story’ for Paul, this is it. (118)

The Climax of the Argument and the Heart of the Disagreement

For my part, I believe these extended quotations get to the pith of the disagreement. Another way of getting at the same issues is to ask, what was it that Christ propitiated? What did he accomplish on the cross? Once that is answered with clarity and precision, I believe other parts of the puzzle fall into place. (In addition to the above quotations, see also pages 126–28 and 141.)

Barcley and Duncan bring their argument to a climax by considering Christ’s imputed righteousness, the rejection of which they regard as the “most dangerous departure from Reformation teaching” (148). Given the larger biblical story and relationship between the covenants a la Barcley and Duncan, there is no reason to abandon the doctrine of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. To the contrary, in light of the demands of the covenant of works (cf. Rom. 5:12–21, but see also Rom. 4; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21), there is every reason to keep it. One does wonder, however, why something on the covenantal notion of an exchange between covenant members and their covenant head is not more clearly emphasized on pages 150–55.

A VALUABLE CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEBATE

While I’ve got a few minor quibbles with the book,[5] I believe that Barcley and Duncan’s work is a valuable contribution to the debate. They are fair to their opponents and see the big picture of the issues involved. Therefore, when they move in to evaluate the details, their observations and critiques are trenchant and relevant. I look forward to seeing the fruitful conversation that should follow.[6]

For pastors, I would think the most valuable part of the book might be chapter 3—the overview of first-century Judaism—for this is not a topic commonly covered in seminaries, nor typically discussed in books whose target audience is local church leaders. Yet, it is the foundation of the whole debate.[7] I for one do not see how anyone could think well about the new perspective without some knowledge of first-century Judaism. Barcley and Duncan serve the church well at this point with their concise yet thorough review.

Finally, the book is well organized and easy to navigate. While a reader will feel the strength of its argument most by reading the book cover to cover, the book will also serve as a helpful reference for considering the many questions that orbit around this huge Pauline-centric universe.

FOR FURTHER READING:

The following list is far from exhaustive. It provides only a helpful starting point for pastors who would like to dig into these issues further than Barcley and Duncan take them.

John Murray, Redemption Accomplished and Applied. Eerdmans, 1955.

R. C. Sproul, Getting the Gospel Right: The Tie That Binds Evangelicals Together, Baker, 1999.

John Piper, Counted Righteous in Christ: Should We Abandon the Imputation of Christ’s

Righteousness? Crossway, 2002.

Stephen Westerholm, Perspectives Old and New on Paul: The “Lutheran” Paul and His Critics,

Eerdmans, 2004.

Brian Vickers, Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness: Paul’s Theology of Imputation, Crossway, 2006.

John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright, Crossway, 2007.

N. T. Wright, Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, InterVarsity, 2009.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, “Wrighting the Wrongs of the Reformation?: The State of the Union with

Christ in St. Paul and Protestant Soteriology,” pages 235–61 in Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N. T. Wright, Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays eds., InterVarsity, 2011.

Thomas R. Schreiner, “Justification: The Saving Righteousness of God in Christ,” JETS 54.1

(March 2011): 19–34.

Michael F. Bird, “What is There Between Minneapolis and St. Andrews? A Third Way in the

Piper-Wright Debate,” JETS 54.2 (June 2011): 299–309.

About the author:

Nicholas Piotrowski is Professor of Biblical Studies at Crossroads Bible College, Indianapolis, Indiana. He is a member of Walnut Grove Chapel.

Reviewed by Aaron Menikoff

Book Review: How Sermons Work

David Murray, How Sermons Work. EP Books, 2011. 112 pages. $9.99

David Murray wants the church to benefit from the faithful preaching of the Word of God. You can tell just by looking at the callings he’s pursued as listed on his blog, “Leadership for Servants”: he identifies himself, in order, as a follower of Christ, a preacher of the gospel, and a Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And before joining a seminary faculty he served as a pastor in Scotland.

Murray’s passion for faithful preaching is also evident in his new book How Sermons Work.

You can get a good idea about the book in this entertaining promotional video by HeadHeartHand Media. It begins with a church member receiving an email from the church office. The pastor is sick and has called upon him to preach! The man begins to type, “Not in a million years” only to delete those words and retype, “Sure.” For the rest of the promo the man scours the Internet for counsel on how to preach. He finally finds Murray’s book, How Sermons Work. The video is a helpful reminder that the book’s main audience is lay elders and other church members looking for “a simple step-by-step guide to help them to prepare sermons in an efficient enjoyable and edifying way” (9).

OVERVIEW

How Sermons Work is divided into eight parts.

First, prepare to preach. Every preacher, even someone asked to deliver a message while the pastor is sick, should strive to ensure that his heart is in the right place and that he has the requisite gifts to preach the Word.

Second, select a text. Murray doesn’t take a stand on whether it is better to preach from one verse or from an entire passage. Instead, he drives home the main point that the Bible must be our text. He also suggests that some verses more than others lend themselves to being preached.

Third, exegete the text. This chapter is a fine overview of the questions that need to be asked when dealing with the original languages, translations, context, and so on. I especially appreciated his reminder that exegeting the text is hard work.

Fourth, vary the sermon. Murray lists a number of different kinds of sermons, ranging from doctrinal to apologetic to political. His main point is a good one: those who preach regularly should be careful not to tire their congregation by preaching sermons that are too similar in style and substance. Nonetheless, he acknowledges that variation is better achieved by varying the books we preach from and the type of application we include in each message.

Fifth, begin the sermon. The section on what not to do when preparing introductions is excellent. Murray is aware of the dangers as he counsels preachers, “Don’t be too long,” “Don’t be too showy,” “Don’t be too ambitious,” and “Don’t be too personal,” to name just a few.

Sixth, organize the sermon. Murray devotes two chapters to arguing that a well-structured sermon is crucial, does not demand a complicated outline, and will flow from one clear idea. For those who are brand new to coming up with sermon outlines, Murray offers an exhaustive list of possibilities.

Seventh, apply the sermon. These two chapters impress upon the reader the necessity of rooting clear and personal application in the text. While I found the second chapter on types of application overwhelming (he lists twenty examples), the principles he offers are helpful.

Eighth, preach a sermon. Delivery matters. The purity of the preacher, the prayer he puts into the message, his personality, posture, passion, and even his pronunciation all play a role. (The alliteration is Murray’s.)

MAY PROVOKE SOME STIMULATING CONVERSATIONS

Thus, Murray successfully gives a quick synopsis of the nuts and bolts of sermon prep. It is a good read, especially for pastors who are looking to raise up some men from within the church who are apt to preach but don’t know where to begin. A few comments sprinkled throughout Murray’s book may even raise some stimulating conversation. Here are just three:

Is the Preacher Different from the Hearer?

First, Murray asserts that the preacher is different from the hearer. Not better, just different. Murray’s point is that a preacher must be holy since a lack of integrity will undermine his preaching. Certainly a preacher must be godly, and an elder is different from other church members in that the Bible demands he meet certain biblical qualifications. Still, I wonder if we should really say the preacher is all that different from the hearer. I think such differences are too often overstressed. After all, the hearer should be holy, too.

Certainly it’s possible to belittle the office of pastor by failing to emphasize the holiness the position demands and the authority the pastor exercises. However, if we overemphasize the difference between preacher and hearer, we can create a chasm between pulpit and pew that is not found in the Bible. And, as a result, the average church member may see the pastor more as a sanctified superhero than a sinner saved by grace.

Where Should One Look for a Sermon Text?

Second, where should one look for a sermon text? I know Murray is open to a preaching calendar set months in advance, but I walked away from his chapter on selecting a text thinking Murray was pointing me everywhere but the table of contents of my Bible, to places like a sermon suggestion box or the nightly news.

Certainly the Lord can lay a particular text upon a preacher’s heart. I want to be sensitive to God’s leading (29). But I’m not sure Spurgeon, who cried out for a text the night before he preached, is the most reliable guide for the average pastor.

Is it Most “Authentic” Not to Use Notes?

Third, is it true that the preachers deemed most “authentic” shy away from sermon notes? I don’t think so. Yet Murray warns preachers not to use exhaustive manuscripts since “this age prefers to be spoken to personally and relationally. There is nothing more authentic than a man preaching eyeball to eyeball, heart to heart, without anything intervening” (149).

This is a small point and it’s hardly crucial to Murray’s task. Still, it is a point I hear regularly, and I’m not sure it is accurate. Authenticity in preaching does not stem from the use or lack of notes, but from a preacher so engaged in the Word, so convinced of its relevance for today, so gripped himself by the power of the gospel, that his conviction is powerfully and spiritually evident—notes or no notes.

SLENDER, PROVOCATIVE, AND USEFUL

How Sermons Work is slender enough to be used by the untrained and provocative enough to stimulate healthy discussion among more experienced preachers. In all, it’s a useful and accessible introduction to sermon preparation.

About the author:

Aaron Menikoff is the senior pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Sandy Springs, Georgia.

March/April 2012

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[1] Bruce Marshall, The World, The Flesh and Father Smith (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945), 108.

[2] C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 318-319.

[3] Those chapters themselves are already summaries; any further condensation would only do violence to the theological positions discussed therein.

[4] Paul’s own words should also contribute to our understanding of first-century Judaism, not merely serve as the object of inquiry after we think we have figured it out without letting Paul weigh in.

[5] For example: i) it is not helpful on pages 54–56 to reference Second Temple texts without quoting them, and ii) the degree of foreknowledge assumed on pages 121–30 seems higher than the rest of the book.

[6] As I mentioned above, it is my opinion that clarity on propitiation would be the most fruitful way forward, as would further thinking on the mutual exchange which occurs by virtue of our covenantal union between the covenant head, Jesus Christ, and his people where believers inherit all that is his—especially his righteousness.

[7] Perhaps the main reason this is so is that new perspective advocates often contend that even after his “conversion” Paul continued in a covenantal nomistic mindset—another point Barcley and Duncan disprove.