Category: Blog

It was my first year in seminary and I was still trying to learn the lingo. I had finally figured out what “eschaton” meant, and in some classes I prayed for it more earnestly than others.

I took an Old Testament course from the world renown scholar Dr. Dan Block that left a massive impact on my thinking, a seismic dent in my Christian worldview. He was lecturing on Psalms when I shyly raised my hand and asked, what seemed to me a perfectly logical question, “What would the Hebrews have thought about secular art?”

He just stared at me as if I had asked if God preferred ninjas to pirates.

Before seminary I was influenced by the back-masking, rock-music burning, independent, fundamentalist warnings against worldly music. I had learned that if you play “Another One Bites the Dust” backwards, and slowed the tempo down just a bit, that you would hear “Start to Smoke Marijuana.” Thou shalt not listen to Bon Jovi was basically the eleventh commandment back in the day.

The question seemed fair. But it exposed an unfortunate result of my former influences. I was viewing the world with a chasmic divide between the secular and the sacred. I had yet to learn of the truth so eloquently stated by Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

Dr. Block was eager to knock some sense into me. With his Canadian accent, and what felt to a seminary newbie like myself to be a smidge of condescension, he replied, “The Hebrews understood that all of life is sacred.” Apparently I didn’t share in their understanding. I think that was his point.

And with that he went back to his lecture. But my mind refused to follow. I couldn’t move on. I have lingered in that statement for well over a decade.

I was jolted. Up to this point I had seen the world through gray lenses and it had just exploded into full color. It was kind of like a Skittles commercial.

So I broadened my my view of art. I opened my mind to new modes of expressing the truths of the Christian faith. And I even re-purchased a few albums that I had trashed during more reflective periods of my late adolescence. It was a Creedence Clearwater Revival. Actually, I was more into hip hop, but hopefully you get my point. I began to see the gospel as big enough to redeem a multitude of artistic genres and harness them for glory of God.

But I think there’s more to the story. I don’t have a major issue with the distinction that one can be an artist who happens to be Christian instead of being dubbed a “Christian artist” or feeling obligated to sign with a “Christian label.” But I think a word of caution is in order. If we aren’t prudent we could swing the pendulum to an unhealthy extreme.

For example, in a recent interview, the musical artist Sufjan Stevens shared his perspective about Christianity and art, “On an aesthetic level, faith and art are a dangerous match. Today, they can quickly lead to devotional artifice or didactic crap. This would summarize the Christian publishing world or the Christian music industry.”

If his point is that there is a lot of music by Christians that imposes unnecessary restrictions on lyrics or lacks imagination then I would agree. But his critique seems deeper than that.

The recent article “How Sufjan Stevens Subverts the Stigma of Christian Music” in The Atlantic praises Stevens for contributing to a needed course change in the approach to Christian music and how it is perceived. Having spent a few years living in Nashville, TN, and still visiting regularly, I wouldn’t argue that there is Christian music in need of subverting. But there is a certain attitude that I sense here, and have sensed elsewhere as well, that I think is dangerous.

Additionally, Stevens builds his case on a false analogy. He likens his approach to forms of art like paintings or instrumental music like Bach’s Mass in B-Minor, with nothing explicitly Christian outside of the fact that they’re produced by artists who are themselves Christian. But this comparison misses a massive distinction: words. Unlike a beautiful painting, or Bach’s concertos, much of Stevens’ music uses W-O-R-D-S.

Words matter. It’s true that we don’t really have Christian paintings, or Christian architecture, or Christian pottery. I get it. I do, however, think there is room to press back against these categories as oversimplifications, but that’s not really my point here. My point is that when you enter the world of words you are treading in a different category.

The Bible is chock-full of instruction regarding words. We are to use our words to build others up in the faith and minister grace (Eph. 4:29). We are to use our words to spread the gospel knowing that faith comes through hearing (Rom. 10:10). We are to use our words carefully knowing will give an account for them (Matt. 12:36). And this is just an appetizer of all that Scripture serves up on the topic.

Our words are to be used on purpose and for a purpose. 

I refuse to return to my former view that divided the world into the categories of secular and sacred. I like living in full color, what Francis Schaeffer referred to as applying the gospel to the “totality of life.” But I do think caution is in order. Even as we bid this false dichotomy farewell and watch it disappear in our rearview mirror, we should give attention to the road ahead. There are ditches on both sides of the highway. And there’s oncoming traffic.

And let’s not forget that the Hebrews, who saw all of life as sacred, used their most skilled musical artists (1 Chron. 25:7) with a diversity of instrumentation (Psalm 150) to call all of creation to its ultimate end of glorifying the Creator: Let everything that has breath praise the Lord (Psalm 150:6).

I once heard David Platt flip this verse by asking the question, “What if this instead read ‘Let everything that praises the Lord have breath?’ What if our every breath was contingent upon its being fully devoted to the praise of God?” This is a powerful word: every breath we breathe is to be consecrated to the praise of the one true and living God.

Perhaps some would consider this a devotional artiface or didactic crap: but for the children of Israel it was simply a way of life. And if there is a stigma related to such an outlook, I wouldn’t attribute it to the Hebrews. It could just be the case that we are the ones not seeing clearly. I know I’ve had to learn that lesson before.

This article was originally posted on Dan DeWitt’s blog, Theolatte. You can view the original post here.

Dan DeWitt is the dean of Boyce College. You can find more content from Dr. DeWitt on his blog at Theolatte.com or follow him on twitter at @DanDeWitt. 

Even when exhortation is not fun, it serves an essential function in the plan of our gracious God to keep us in the faith.

I think most of us with any sense of awareness can recognize that we are living in one of those great transitional moments in human history. But there is one thing that must not change: the Christian task of bearing faithful witness to the glory of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some would disagree and argue that the Christian witness, to be faithful, must change anything and everything to fit the culture as it changes over time and across locations. They might quote the apostle Paul: “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:22). I propose, however, that far from a mandate to accommodate all things, Paul’s words here are a manifesto for ministry that puts the gospel above all things.

Where we are in history

We have reached the culmination of an historical progress that has become a pattern in which we must anticipate radical change for the rest of our lives. One of the signs we need to recognize is that we are coming to terms with the collapse of “cultural Christianity” in America. This is something that we knew had to happen, but it did not seem to be happening very fast. But the mechanisms that have delayed secularization here, which has already moved so rapidly throughout Europe, have now largely failed and cultural Christianity is disappearing before our eyes in two directions at once: geographically and generationally. The closer you get to a metropolitan area and the younger you go in the population, the less likely you are to find any form of cultural Christianity.

While cultural Christianity is disappearing, religious unbelief and those who claim no religious affiliation are on the rise. Charles Taylor, the Canadian philosopher, tells us that we have passed through three intellectual epochs. Before the Enlightenment, it was impossible not to believe. After the Enlightenment, it became possible not to believe. But now, for many, the worldview they inhabit makes it impossible for them to believe; they are now so secular that they do not even know they are secular. And along with unbelief, those with no religious affiliation are increasing. “Nones,” as they are known, now account for one out of every five Americans, the Pew Research Center estimates. Under the age of 30, that number jumps to one in three.

Along this trajectory of collapsing cultural Christianity and the rise of radical secularization, the greatest moral revolution this world has known is now spinning almost entirely without constraint. By any kind of historical evaluation, the moral revolution we are now experiencing is without precedent in terms of its scale and velocity. This revolution is overturning millennia of agreement in almost all cultures regarding human gender and sexuality, marriage and the family — and it is taking place within a single generation. I would argue that no moral revolution on this scale has ever been experienced by a society that remained intact.

What we are facing

How in the world are we going to go about the Christian task of bearing gospel witness in the midst of a moral revolution that defies exaggeration? And here I mean “in the world” in both senses: as an expression of musing and as the location of ministry. In times of trouble, silence is not an option. We are called to speak the truth here and now.

To see what kind of theological and missiological thinking is required of us to speak the truth here and now, we must look to the apostles’ example and instruction God gives us in the Scriptures. Doing so, we find sure footing to stand and speak within an unprecedented moral revolution by first listening carefully to Paul’s gospel ministry manifesto:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. … I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings (1 Cor 9:19-23).

In short, then, our challenge is to become all things to all people, that by all means and for the sake of the gospel we might save some who hear good news in a revolution that is rebelling against even basic human flourishing.

How ‘in the world’ Christians witness

Reading Paul’s gospel ministry manifesto in isolation could easily lead to a mandate for universal accommodation. Everything would be on the table, from theology to morality to church and family structures. But the problem for such a radical accommodationism is that Paul must be understood in the context of his other writings and the rest of God’s inspired and inerrant Word.

Reading with this presupposition, Paul’s gospel ministry manifesto teaches us how to speak the truth in our own time of trouble in these last days.

We must give up real freedoms that risk the gospel. The church has a severe credibility crisis because the world does not think we mean what we say. We may proclaim the gospel, but it is often difficult to hear and believe when we more highly praise and prize our freedoms in the gospel. Paul, however, always puts the gospel first. Although he has legitimate rights and freedoms as an apostle and in Christ, Paul will not allow any of them to deny him the opportunity to bring the blessings of the gospel to those in need. This is how we become genuine servants of others, when their need for the gospel becomes more important than our freedom in the gospel.

We must serve others under the law of Christ. Many would say that we need to grow up and face the fact that we live in a modern world that rejects supernatural and universal truth claims as oppressive and contrary to reason. The Christians among them would say that serving others by becoming all things to all people requires an unlimited flexibility, even in theology and morality. But while Paul says he is outside the law, he does not mean that he is an outlaw. He says, in effect, “I am outside the law of Moses, but I am under the law of Christ.” This is a very important qualification; Paul again puts the gospel first. No time and no situation can require or permit a sub-gospel witness because Jesus, who is the gospel, has with all authority commissioned his church to make disciples of every nation, teaching them to obey all that he has commanded — which certainly includes matters of doctrine and morality.

We must witness without over- or under-accommodating. Paul is no pragmatic accommodationist. On matters of theology and morality in particular, Paul is strikingly inflexible. He is constantly and consistently concerned with the endurance of sound doctrine in the churches. He tells Timothy to guard the church against those who come in as ravenous wolves, those who are saying, “We need theological reformulation.” And Paul was no less tolerant of the sexualization spreading throughout the culture of his day. When he hears that the Corinthians are doing things that are detestable even to the pagans in the area, he warns them that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

So, if we are not supposed to accommodate doctrine and we are not supposed to relativize morality, then what are we supposed to do? First, we must recognize that the Scriptures give us clear teachings that are of first importance, and these cannot be accommodated. But we also need to see that everything else can be accommodated.

The Christian task can be summarized this way: Christians must bear faithful witness to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ by holding onto everything the Bible clearly says to hold on to and letting go of all things that would undermine those “first things.”

In the midst of an unprecedented moral revolution, the task of Christian witness will not be easy. It will require our keenest thinking and the most faithful theological and biblical understanding to preach no other gospel than the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, even as we become all things to all people to share with them in the blessings of the gospel. We will, therefore, trust in God’s grace to ground his church in the truth such that we will know what “all” means, all the time.

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R. Albert Mohler Jr. is president of Southern Seminary. You can connect with Dr. Mohler on Twitter, Facebook and on AlbertMohler.com

Few words are more invested with meaning than the term “headship.” It’s a Christological and theological term that is grounded in Ephesians 5:23, which reads “For the husband is the head [Greek kephale] of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.” This is the preeminent statement in all of Scripture on what a husband is and is to be.

This means that the husband, in John Piper’s seminal words, is the one who takes “primary responsibility for Christlike servant leadership, protection, and provision in the home” (Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, 84). There is so much to unpack here, and it can be confusing for modern men to understand, especially since a secularizing culture dislikes, even detests, the concept. Because that is the case, let me suggest ten ways by which godly husbands can practice Christlike headship in their home.

10. Christlike male headship means that you see the spiritual nourishment of your wife as your primary duty (Eph. 5:28-30). This doesn’t happen by accident; it happens as, on a regular basis, you open the Bible with her, pray with her, and talk about God with her. You don’t need to be a global theologian to read the Bible and pray the Bible, right?

9. Christlike male headship means that you love just one wife. Like Jesus, who loved only his bride, you have eyes for no one else. You save up your affection for her. You live on a continual mission to treasure her and to make her feel treasured.

8. Christlike male headship means that you train yourself to know the Lord in a vibrant way. You recognize that your family will only flourish under your leadership when you are flourishing in Christ. This means being in the Word regularly and praying regularly and being a faithful church member. You don’t have to be a spiritual all-star, future biographers poring over your Moleskins for clues into your thinking. You do need to be faithful to your Savior by the Spirit’s awesome power (Romans 6, 8).

7. Christlike male headship means on date night/vacations, you think first, “What would she like to do?” not, “What would I like to do?” If you’re on vacation or a date, you’re first trying to find activities she would enjoy. With apologies to 1990s-era bracelets, I try to ask myself, WWBL—what would Bethany like? For you, this may mean that you forgo a war museum, a basketball or baseball game, or a superhero movie. Then, not only do you find something she would like to do, but you enter into it fully. You’re present with her. She will love you for it.

6. Christlike male headship means that at dinner, after a long day at work, you hold the baby so your wife, frazzled from kids and home, can eat first. Your food is getting cold; your stomach is growling. You are hungry, and mannishly so. But you hold your child so that the woman who sacrificially gives 100% of her energy each day to care for your children can, at the very least, eat a hot meal. You can’t make childraising easy; it’s always challenging. You can, however, make it more pleasurable.

5. Christlike male headship means, when conflict happens (as it will), you lead in apologizing. First, before you speak, you listen well, inviting your wife to share what hurt her. You don’t interrupt her or fight her off. As you think about what you’ve done, you confess your sin to her. You don’t offer excuses; you display humility by owning your faults like a man. You lead in showing humility; you don’t expect her to show it first.

4. Christlike male headship means that you show strength wherever you can. You’re not a sphinx; you’re not a superman. You can and should show genuine emotion, and you should make clear to your son(s) that men get sad, men get angry at evil, men are tender and gentle with women. But like David charged Solomon, you’re engaged in a lifelong process of “showing yourself a man” and thus being strong for others (1 Kings 2:2). When hardship hits, headship persists.

3. Christlike male headship means that you put yourself in harm’s way, gladly taking a hit to protect your family (and the weak). Christ “gave himself up” for the church (Eph. 5:25). You do the same for loved ones and, by extension, those in your neighborhood without protection. You do so willingly, without fear, knowing that this is your divine call as a man. You may not be a fearsome linebacker; your shoulders may not ripple with muscle. But as a God-ordained head, whether 6’6” or 4’10” you put yourself in the line of fire, and you take others out of it.

2. Christlike male headship means that like the best leaders—generals, presidents, coaches, and so on—you solicit gobs of wisdom from wise counselors (namely, your wife).You generously and gladly solicit your wife’s wisdom. If your relationship is like mine, she will put you to shame in this category. She will have good idea after good idea. None of this threatens you or upsets you. The strongest men are not those who never listen. The strongest men are those who are so confident in Christ that they crave wisdom, celebrate humility, and are glad, not threatened, when others contribute.

1. In these and 1,000 other ways, Christlike male headship means you die to yourself daily. This is your constant thought throughout the day: how can I be like Jesus and die to myself for the good of my wife and my family? He “gave himself up” for others. In the power of his cross and resurrection, I am going to do the same, come what may.


Conclusion


You may never have witnessed this kind of leadership. It might only be theoretical. Men in your past might have abused their authority and strength, and doubly damned themselves by justifying their abuses as part of manhood and leadership. If this is your experience, I invite you to consider the cross, which makes all things new. Christian leadership doesn’t mean everyone bowing down to you because you’re so great. It means, like Jesus, that you become a courageous servant, dying to yourself for the benefit of others. If you have heard differently, wipe the slate clean. The Bible’s word is better than any other. Read Ephesians 5 again, and soak it in.

Our culture may reject male headship; it may undermine men. None of that matters to you. None of it bogs you down. Whether trained by a godly dad from birth or newly learning about headship as a young believer, your face is set like a flint to pursue the glory of God as the Christlike head of a home. That’s your goal; that, like a distant trumpet summoning you to sacrificial leadership, is your call.

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This article was originally posted on the blog of the The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You can read the original article here.

Owen Strachan is Assistant Professor of Christian Theology and Church History at Boyce College.  He is also President of The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  You can find more content from Dr. Strachan on CBMW.org or follow him on Twitter at @OStrachan. 

It’s likely you’ve heard some version of the following statement in recent history, “Religion is a result of evolution.” I understand why skeptics would make this claim, and why they would feel a corresponding need to provide a natural explanation for the universal reality that humans are religious beings. But what might this imply?

I thought about this recently in an exchange with a skeptic friend and I thought, for the sake of mental exercise, that I would concede that this proposition is true. So let’s concede that religion is a product of evolution. What might that prove? It seems it would have at least two implications that appear, at least to me, to be inescapable:

A.) If religion is a product of evolution, then religion is false (that much seems rather obvious).

B.) If religion is a product of evolution, then evolution isn’t concerned with leading us to truth (this seems unavoidable).

If the vast majority of humans, in both the past and present, have evolved to hold false beliefs (ie. religion) then it is clear that evolution isn’t a reliable process for attaining truth. It may be concerned with adaptability and survival, but it seems impossible to claim both that it led to such widespread false views of reality, such as universal religious beliefs, and at the same time produced the reliable mental equipment necessary to otherwise give us confidence that we know truth. Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me.

Perhaps I’ve not thought about this enough, but it seems to me, at this stage of my thinking, that there is a third implication that follows:

C.) If religion is a product of evolution, then evolution isn’t concerned with leading us to truth, then we don’t have good reason to say with confidence that it is true that religion is a product of evolution because evolution isn’t concerned with leading us to truth.

Maybe I’m overstepping the third point, but I’m finding it difficult to see how you can accept A without accepting B, and if B follows, then C seems to be the roundabout that calls into question our ability to confidently assert A.

But, on the other hand, perhaps there is another way of looking at this. Maybe the universal religious longing of humanity is pointing to something real. What if we have good reason to trust our mental faculties, in that our brains are designed and directed at truth? And what if, just thinking out loud here, our universal yearning for the divine is more than an illusion passed down for some survival benefit?

What if our mental faculties our directed at truth, and what if this gaping hole that men and women seek to fill with religion is a sign that we were created to know our Creator?

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This article was originally posted on Dan DeWitt’s blog, Theolatte. You can view the original post here.

Dan DeWitt is the dean of Boyce College. You can find more content from Dr. DeWitt on his blog at Theolatte.com or follow him on twitter at @DanDeWitt. 

From no-fault divorce to gay marriage, our culture has undertaken an enormous social experiment on issues of gender and sexuality. All manner of sexual dysfunction has become quite mainstream. As resolute Christians, our response cannot simply be to curse the darkness and to stand aloof from the culture. God calls us to be in the world, not of the world, for the sake of the world (John 17:15-18). God calls us to holiness so that we can engage our culture with the gospel. To do that, we have to be like the men of Issachar — men who understood the times and who knew what the people of God were to do (1 Chr 12:32). That is why we need to understand the worldview commitments of our own culture so that we can bring the gospel to bear upon it. We can summarize that worldview in three statements.

First, our culture believes that gender is something that you learn, not something that you are. In other words, the idea of male and female comprises a set of stereotypes that we absorb from our culture. Male and female does not designate a universal, innate distinction between men and women. Gender is merely a social construct. Except for obvious biological differences, all other social distinctions between male and female are purely conventional. If there are any psychological distinctions between males and females, they are learned, and they can and need to be unlearned so that there can be a total equality between the sexes. This worldview is so entrenched in today’s culture that one can hardly suggest that there might be innate differences between male and female without being dismissed as a sexist and a bigot.

Second, our culture holds that sex is for pleasure, not for God. We might call this the Sheryl Crow philosophy on sexuality: if it makes you happy, it can’t be that bad.

This worldview affirms any and all attempts to get sexual pleasure so long as such attempts do not harm others. If it feels good and you’re not hurting anyone, then how could it possibly be wrong? The encroachment of this perspective explains to some extent why one in four evangelical “Christian” teenagers do not believe in abstaining from sex before marriage and why more than a third of white evangelical Protestants make their “sexual début” shortly after turning 16. This libertine worldview has had a devastating effect on the sexual mores of self-identified “Christians.”

Third, our culture maintains that marriage is cultural, not universal. In other words, marriage is something that comes to us from human culture, not from God. It has a human origin, not a divine one. With God out of the picture, humans are free to make marriage into whatever they want. This final piece accounts for much of the confusion and the conflict surrounding the so-called “culture war” about the issue of marriage in our society. Not only is this worldview evident in sky-rocketing divorce rates and in legal outrages such as “no fault” divorce; it also undergirds the current push in our society for states to recognize same-sex “marriage.”

If gender is something you learn and not something you are and if sex is for pleasure and not for God, then same-sex relationships should not be treated any differently than heterosexual relationships. Once a society divorces maleness and femaleness and from the Creator’s design, there is no moral basis for privileging heterosexual unions over any other kind of union (homosexual or otherwise).

Gender in Biblical Focus

The biblical worldview stands in stark contrast to our culture’s way of thinking about gender and sexuality.

First, the Bible teaches that gender is something you are before you learn anything. In other words, the distinctions between male and female find their origin in God’s good creation, not in what we learn from culture. That is not to say that the people do not absorb ideas about gender from the culture, some of which are quite unhelpful.

Jesus and Paul look back, without exception, to the pre-fall monogamous union of Adam and Eve as the norm of human sexuality and marriage.

But that fact should neither be used to suppress the truth that in the beginning God differentiated humankind as male and female as a part of his original creation-work, nor should it obscure the fact that God unambiguously called this differentiation “good” (Gen 1:27, 31). The union of the first man and the first woman was the most healthy, wholesome, and satisfying union that has ever existed, and it involved a man leading his wife and a wife following the leadership of her husband (Gen 2). And, though no other marriage will reach such perfection on this side of glory, Christians should strive with integrity toward this ideal.

Second, the Bible teaches that sex is for God before there is any lasting pleasure. God is not a cosmic killjoy when it comes to sex. God intends for his creatures to enjoy this gift for his sake. But when people treat pleasure as the goal of sex, not only do they end up in immorality, but they also end up with less pleasure. The only way to maximize the pleasure that God intends for our sexuality is to live in light of the truth that our bodies are not for immorality but for the lord (1 Cor 6:13). Thus what we do with our bodies vis a vis sex matters to God. That is why Paul commands us, “Therefore, glorify God with your body” (1 Cor 6:20). The covenant of marriage is the most pleasurable and the most God-glorifying context in which to enjoy our sexuality. The Christian sexual ethic does not call people away from joy, but toward it.

Third, the Bible teaches that marriage is universal, not cultural. The Bible teaches that marriage was designed and created by God, not by human culture. In fact, it is interesting to see how the New Testament proves this fact in light of the old Testament. When Jesus and Paul set out new covenant marital norms, they do not appeal to polygamist kings like David or Solomon or to polygamist patriarchs like Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. For all the importance these old Testament figures have in the history of redemption, Jesus and Paul do not look to any of them as the paradigm for understanding marriage. Instead, Jesus and Paul look back, without exception, to the pre-fall monogamous union of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 as the norm of human sexuality and marriage. “For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cling to his wife; and they shall become one flesh” (Gen 2:24; cf. Matt 19:5; Mark 10:7-8; 1 Cor 6:16; Eph 5:31). The apostle Paul says that the great “mystery” of the Genesis 2 norm of marriage is that God intended it all along to be a shadow of a greater reality: Christ’s marriage to his church (Eph 5:31-32). Thus, marriage is not defined by the culture, but by the gospel itself.

The Church’s Calling

Our society is confused about gender and sexuality because it has forgotten what it means to be created in the image of God as male and female. Instead, we have plunged headlong into the genderless void, not thinking about the consequences for our children and the public good. Christians must stand resolute in this context. What our friends and neighbors need more than anything is for Christians and their churches to set forth a faithful counter-witness on these issues. The messages coming from the culture are clear. Ours should be even more so.

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This article was originally posted in the summer 2012 issue of Southern Seminary Magazine.

Denny Burk is associate professor of biblical studies at Boyce College. You can find more content from Dr. Burk on his blog at DennyBurk.com or follow him on twitter at @DennyBurk. 

I  had the privilege of playing football at the University of Alabama. It was an opportunity that I wouldn’t trade for anything. However, if anyone thinks that college football is all about the excitement that takes place on autumn afternoons, they are highly naïve. Most of a college football player’s time is spent in the drudgery of offseason workouts.

The Kingdom of Wingo

While at Alabama, my strength and conditioning coach was Rich Wingo, a former linebacker for Alabama and the Green Bay Packers. He is the toughest human being I have ever encountered, and I’m convinced that he must have played without a helmet. If you survived a Wingo offseason conditioning workout, it was a point of great satisfaction.

But Wingo also knew that, no matter how great a motivator he was, he needed incentives to encourage the players to push the limits of their endurance. So, in the spring of 1989, he told us that, at the end of winter workouts, he would hand out “Bama Pride” workout shirts to those who excelled in the offseason conditioning program.

To my delight, I was one of five players who earned the “Bama Pride” shirt. Possessing this shirt set you apart as a devoted and disciplined disciple of the Wingo kingdom.

But then came a day of reckoning. We were in a spring training scrimmage in our indoor practice facility. Then the fullback came out to block me and went for my knee. My knee hyperextended, putting me in extreme pain, so the trainers pulled me to the side and placed ice on my knee.

Five minutes into my injury, Wingo saw me. He said, “BP, get on the stationary bike and peddle at 1500 RPM’s.” I knew this was a good time to reason with him, so I said, “Coach Wingo, I just injured my knee and what you’re asking would be a challenge for two healthy legs.”

He looked at me and said, “BP, get off the bike.” “Ah,” I thought, “he does have a heart.” But at that moment, he started pushing the bike and told me to follow. He pushed it outside, where it was sleeting. He then looked at me and said, “Now maybe you can get it to 1500 RPM’s.” I decided that he needed to be reasoned with again. So I said, “Coach Wingo, if I can’t peddle this hard in 72 degrees, I will probably have a harder time peddling in 35 degrees.” He looked at me and said, “BP, lift up your arms.” As I did, he pulled that “Bama Pride” shirt off my back and said, “you don’t deserve this anymore.” At that point, I started peddling, because I didn’t know what else he might pull off.

Wingo’s method was effective. He knew how to motivate and push you beyond your perceived limits. We knew the terms of his kingdom, and we knew the consequences of not meeting those terms. But, in his kingdom, our inner attitude toward him was irrelevant. As long as we showed outward respect to him and met his terms and demands, love or hate toward him was utterly inconsequential.

That is, in a nutshell, the difference between human kingdoms and the kingdom of God. In the former, outward conformity, apparent submission and external allegiance and obedience are all that matters. But in God’s kingdom, why we do what we do is as important as what we do. This is what Paul means when he writes that, all that we do is to be done with “sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord,” and “heartily, as for the Lord” (Col 3:22-23).

It’s important, when we think about the kingdom, that we know what it is and how it erupts into the present age.

The Kingdom of God: God’s Reign over All of Creation Through the Messiah

Scripture begins with the announcement that God, as creator, is the sovereign king of the universe. In this sense, the entire universe is God’s kingdom, and he alone is to be worshipped and obeyed. Indeed, “The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all” (Ps 103:19). It is undeniable that the Lord reigns (Ps 93:1; 97:1; 99:1).

But if God’s kingdom is already universal and comprehensive, how do we make sense of Jesus’ prayer that God’s kingdom come (Lk 11:2)? Jesus is referring to something new – a need brought on by human sin, rebellion and death.

Before the fall, God created a world that he described as “very good.” Yet now, in light of a human revolt, God’s rule over creation is rejected by humankind. Consequently, we now stand under God’s sentence of condemnation, guilt and death (Gen 2:16-17; Rom 3:23; 6:23).

It’s at this juncture that the Old Testament makes a critical distinction between the sovereign reign of God over the entire creation and the coming of his saving reign, by which he makes all things right. This salvation plan becomes the theme of the Bible and of redemptive history. Israel’s hope becomes a messianic redeemer who will set creation right – to usher in the saving reign of God. This is the kingdom that Jesus tells us to pray for – a kingdom that will dispel all sin and rebellion and include a redeemed people who serve as his vice-regents over a new heaven and new earth.

In the Old Testament, this hope for a messianic redeemer is announced by the prophets. This redeemer, who is mysteriously both “Mighty God” and a descendent of David (Isa 9:6-7), will have “dominion from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth” (Ps 72:8). To say it another way, God’s plan was to glorify himself by establishing his saving reign over all of creation through the agency of the Davidic Messiah.

The New Testament proclaims that, in Jesus Christ, the long-awaited kingdom has come and, with him, the deathblow to the rule of sin, death and the devil. In the cross, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, this divine plan has been actualized and God’s saving reign has moved into the world to reconstitute, reconcile and renew a people and the cosmos. Because of Christ’s victory, the kingdom goal is accomplished. There is nothing that can or need be added. God in Christ has overcome the alienation that characterized fallen creation.

Yet not everyone recognizes or submits to the reign of Christ. This brings us to the means of the kingdom. The kingdom is brought about by God through Christ by the Holy Spirit. Yet, as the Bible makes clear, God employs human means.

**Look out for Part 2 of this series soon. This article originally appeared in A Guide to Evangelism by SBTS Press. You can download the full PDF for free here or from at the link below.

A Guide to Evangelism

by Dan DeWitt

A Guide to Evangelism, edited by Dan DeWitt, will equip Christians and churches with the tools they need for more faithful evangelism. With chapters focusing on the role that a church’s preaching and polity can play in the task of evangelism, as well as chapters with practical advice for Christians engaging different groups, such as Muslims, skeptics and nominal Christians, this book will help Christians fulfill their role in spreading the gospel so that grace extends to more people to the glory of God.

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