The Life & Ministry of J.C. Ryle

Our youth discipleship group at SRPC is reading through J.C. Ryle's Practical Religion.  For those unfamiliar with the life and ministry of Bishop Ryle, I would highly recommend listening to THIS riveting biographical lecture by Welsh minister, Rev. William Hughes.  My wife and I personally  attended this conference in 2007 at Grace Reformed Baptist Church in Mebane, NC.

Thomas Watson on Gospel-Mourning

Commenting on Matthew 5:4 ("Blessed are those who mourn..."), Thomas Watson writes,

The Antinomian talks of comfort – but cries down mourning for sin. He is like a foolish patient who, having a pill prescribed him, licks the sugar – but throws away the pill. The libertine is all for joy and comfort. He licks the sugar – but throws away the bitter pill of repentance. If ever we have true comfort we must have it in God's way and method. Sorrow for sin ushers in joy: ‘I will restore comforts to him, and to his mourners’ (Isaiah 57:18). That is the true sunshine of joy – which comes after a shower of tears. We may as well expect a crop without seed – as comfort without gospel-mourning.

Yea, Though I Walk...

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Commenting on Psalm 23:4 ["Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."], Charles Spurgeon writes,

"Yeah though I walk," as if the believer did not quicken his pace when he came to die, but still calmly walked with God. To walk indicates the steady advance of a soul which knows its road, knows its end, resolves to follow the path, feels quite safe, and is therefore perfectly calm and composed. The dying saint is not in a flurry, he does not run as though he were alarmed, nor stand still as though he would go no further, he is not confounded nor ashamed, and therefore, keeps to his old pace. Observe that it is not walking in the valley, but through the valley. We go through the dark tunnel of death and emerge into the light of immortality. We do not die, we do but sleep to wake in glory. Death is not the house but the porch, not the goal but the passage to it.

George Barna, Self-Described Christians & the Reformed Faith

Last September, the Barna Group released a study entitled, "Self-Described Christians Dominate America, but Wrestle with Four Aspects of Spiritual Depth." The study, which involved a survey "conducted by telephone" upon "a national random sample of adults (18 or older) selected from across the 48 continental states," is presented as a follow-up to George Barna's recent book, Maximum Faith. In the book, Barna cites various statistics to show that "there are several barriers to overcome before many people are likely to persevere and maximize their connection with God." In particular, there are four barriers or obstacles highlighted in the study:  Commitment, Repentance, Activity, and Spiritual Community.

According to Barna, "While everyone is on a lifelong journey, the research revealed that a relatively small proportion of individuals stick with the process long enough to become the mature Christ-followers and world changers that they are meant to be." In other words, his guiding assumption is that this data reveals different maturity levels among true Christians, not necessarily different spiritual conditions (e.g. "regenerate" or "unregenerate"). What follows is a summary and analysis of Barna's findings in light of the Westminster Standards. Perhaps at some future point, we can dig into the Scripture texts behind our doctrinal standards, but (at least for now), I want to evaluate these statistics with the assumption that we believe them to be Biblical.

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Commitment

According to Barna, 81% of self-described Christians "say that have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today." That means the other 19% believe themselves to be Christians, yet presently have no meaningful commitment to Christ! It gets worse. The survey revealed that while 79% "agreed that spirituality is very important to them," only 18% claim to be "totally committed to investing in their own spiritual development" and only 22% claim to be "totally dependent upon God."
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Repentance
Perhaps the most striking results of this survey relate to repentance.  While 64% of self-described Christians claim to have "confessed their sins to God and asked for His forgiveness," only 3% claim to have "surrendered control of their life to God, submitted to His will for their life, and devoted themselves to loving and serving God and other people." Now, just as a reminder, Westminster Shorter Catechism #87 teaches that "Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth, with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God, with full purpose of, and endeavor after, new obedience." Repentance does not require sinless perfection, but it does entail that a person has consciously devoted himself to the service of Christ as Lord over every area of life. And, according to Westminster Confession of Faith (15.3), "Although repentance be not to be rested in, as any satisfaction for sin, or any cause of the pardon thereof, which is in the act of God's free grace in Christ; yet it is of such necessity to all sinners, that none may expect pardon without it."  In other words, according to a Reformed understanding of salvation, only 3% of the self-described American Christians in this study may be regarded as having even claimed to be true believers.
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Activity & Spiritual Commitment
With respect to engaging in religious activities, Barna observed that 39% of those polled "have participated in a combination of three 'normal' religious activities in the past week (i.e. attending church services, praying, reading the Bible)." Moreover, with respect to Spiritual Community, "only one out of every five self-identifying Christians (21%) believes that spiritual maturity requires a vital connection to a community of faith." With this in view, let me now turn your attention to some complimentary statistics relating to church attendance in America. In April of 2010, pollster Scott Rasmussen released data to show that 78% of Americans affirm a belief in the historicity of Jesus' resurrection from the dead. Nevertheless, according to a study from 2004, only 26.3% of Americans claim to be Evangelical Protestants. And, to cap it off, another study from 2008 claims that only 9% of Americans regularly attend an Evangelical Protestant worship service. Now, in keeping with the Westminster Confession of Faith (25.2), we affirm that "The visible Church... is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation." In other words, those joined to Christ by faith will ordinarily be joined to  (or actively seeking) a local body of Christ, for instruction, fellowship, and accountability. The Church doesn't save people, but it does preach the gospel of Christ the Savior.  And those Christ saves cannot but love His bride and body, the Church. Hence, according to a Reformed understanding of salvation and ecclesiology, any self-described Christian who refuses to join a local church lacks a credible profession of faith in Christ.
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Some Thoughts
According to Barna, this study represents "several church-wide concerns that could be addressed toward helping self-identified Christians experience a more fulfilling and robust relationship with and faith in Christ." However, according to a Reformed understanding of salvation, it represents much more than that. Indeed, it means that when Jesus said "few find" the narrow gate leading to eternal life, He wasn't kidding. Now, please understand, I take no delight in making these kinds of observations, but it strikes me that many Reformed Churches need to come to grips with what mainstream evangelicalism has become: A MISSION FIELD.
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Of course, I'm not suggesting that every self-described Christian in Barna's study is an evangelical.  But I am suggesting that Barna's analysis of these statistics is par for the evangelical course. In other words, most mainstream evangelicals would not view an unrepentant, un-shepherded, self-described Christian as lacking a credible profession. A belief in Christ's resurrection and a willingness to call oneself a Christian is often all it takes to be regarded as such in most American evangelical churches. But the abandonment of repentance is an implicit denial of the gospel, which teaches that true conversion consists in both justifying faith and repentance unto life. In churches that follow Barna's lead in regarding repentance as among the "final stops on the transformational journey," we can no longer expect to find the same "gospel unity" that was perhaps available in years past. Whereas Reformed Churches regard a professed engagement to trust and obey Christ in all areas of life as essential to a true profession, this is no longer the norm in the broader American church. And, if we are honest, we must confess that a gospel minus repentance is no gospel at all. Nor can an "evangelicalism" that regards commitment (Mk. 10:21), repentance (Lk. 13:3), and church membership (I Jn. 3:14) as optional upgrades to the Christian life be regarded as truly "evangelical."
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Now, practically speaking, all of this has implications for Reformed Churches. I'm not going to suggest what those implications may be, but I do want to ask five questions to get you thinking.

1. As Reformed Churches, should we willingly transfer the membership of a person under our care to a church that denies repentance as essential to true conversion and/or does not provide active oversight of its members?
2. To what extent (and with what urgency) should the members of mainstream evangelical Churches be encouraged to begin attending (and seek membership in) a Reformed Church?
3. When a person leaves a Church that doesn't preach the gospel of repentance for one that does, should this be regarded as (in some sense) an evangelistic victory, or marginalized as mere theological improvement?
4. When elders are interviewing folks for communion and/or communicant membership, should they regularly inquire into the person's understanding of things like commitment, repentance, and the role of the local church?
5. Should Reformed pastors be emphasizing the necessity of repentance in their preaching and visitation ministries, recognizing that (for all they know) a good number of those surveyed by Barna could very well be members of Reformed Churches?

Great Question!

Saw this earlier today, just down the road from our home and couldn't resist posting it. In case you're wondering, the answer is an emphatic "No!" We are all born dead in sin, and faith itself is the gift of God (Eph. 2:1-10). God cannot trust us to produce what only His Spirit can freely give in the first place. I sincerely hope that this was the response they were looking for.

John Calvin on the New Testament Sabbath

We could debate all day as to just how close Calvin comes to embracing the Sabbatarian views of the Westminster Standards. However, let's get one things straight: he by no means denied that on the first day of the week, Christians are bound to rest from their labors, to cease from all forms of "indolent repose," and to spend the day engaging in the public worship of God and "meditating on his works." Commenting on Jesus' public reading of Scripture at a synagogue in Nazareth (Luke 4:16), Calvin writes,

Hence, also it is evident, what was the true and lawful method of keeping the Sabbath. When God commanded his people to abstain from working on that day, it was not that they might give themselves up to indolent repose, but, on the contrary, that they might exercise themselves in meditating on his works. Now, the minds of men are naturally blind to the consideration of his works, and must therefore be guided by the rule of Scripture. Though Paul includes the Sabbath in an enumeration of the shadows of the law (Col. 2:16), yet, in this respect, our manner of observing it is the same with that of the Jews: the people must assemble to hear the word, to public prayers, and to the other exercises of religion. It was for this purpose that the Jewish Sabbath was succeeded by the Lord’s Day.

66-Volume Collected Works On Sale for $26!

If anyone is excited about the recent resurgence of interest in Reformed and Puritan books, it's me.  If they never stop reprinting dead Calvinists, you won't hear me complaining.  However, I fear that amidst all of this book-craving madness, there is one book that is becoming less and less prominent in the lives of young Reformed men.  Yes, I'm talking about the Bible.  I don't have the statistics, but (for what it's worth, which may not be very much!) my own limited experience tells me that many young Reformed men are not regularly reading through the Bible each year and (at least for me) that sends up some immediate red flags.  Perhaps it would help if we started referring to the Bible as a 66-volume set of the Holy Spirit's Collected Works, on sale now (in one concise volume) at Reformation Heritage Books for only $26 (bonded leather)!  Or maybe it would help to simply reflect on the fact that the Puritans and Reformers were great not because they mastered the Puritans and Reformers, but primarily because they mastered the Apostles and Prophets.  Indeed, Scottish preacher Robert Murray M'Cheyne is perhaps most famous not for any one of his sermons in particular, but for his systematic Bible-reading plan (check it out HERE)!

Now don't get me wrong: I'm not trying to pit the Bible against man-made theological literature.  I love the Westminster Standards to the point of committing much of the Larger Catechism to memory.  Without question, God has given us a rich confessional, theological, and experimental heritage and we need to labor diligently to rediscover it!  But as a personal means of grace, weapon against sin, and tool for theological development, I consider the Westminster Standards and the Reformers and all the Puritans combined to be quite insignificant compared to the Bible.  Of course, regular Bible-reading should always be accompanied by catechism memorization and the avid consumption of edifying Reformed literature.  But the latter without the former is not healthy.  In fact, it's quite dangerous.

In conclusion, just to prove that I'm not some kind of "me and my Bible" anti-intellectual curmudgeon, I leave you with the uninspired (yet inspiring) words of J.C. Ryle on the importance of personal Bible-reading.    But please, once you're done reading the Ryle quote, pick up something a bit more... um... what's the word I'm looking for? ... oh yes... INSPIRED ... and put God's Book back at the top of your reading list!

Let us learn in the next place, that the chief weapon we ought to use in resisting Satan is the Bible. Three times the great enemy offered temptations to our Lord.  Three times his offer was refused, with a text of Scripture as the reason, "it is written."

Here is one among many reasons, why we ought to be diligent readers of our Bibles.  The Word is the sword of the Spirit.  We shall never fight a good fight, if we do not use it as our principal weapon.  The Word is the lamp for our feet.  We shall never keep the king's highway to heaven, if we do not journey by its light.  It may well be feared, that there is not enough Bible-reading amongst us.  It is not sufficient to have the Book.  We must actually read it, and pray over it ourselves.  It will do us no good, if it only lies still in our houses.  We must be actually familiar with its contents, and have its texts stored in our memories and minds.  Knowledge of the Bible never comes by intuition.  It can only be got by hard, regular, daily, attentive, wakeful reading.  Do we grudge the time and trouble this will cost us?  If we do, we are not yet fit for the kingdom of God. [Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, Vol. 1, p. 26]