Category Archives: Stephen Charnock

Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Mortification.4

11 Tuesday Aug 2020

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Charnock then considers affirmative evidence of true mortification. 

First, “When upon a temptation that did usually excite the beloved lust, it doth not stir, it is a sign of a mortified state.” He provides Peter as an example. Before the crucifixion, Peter famously boasted that though all desert Jesus, Peter would not. Peter proceeds to deny Christ. As Thomas Manton put it, “Peter, that ventured upon a band of men, was overcome by the weak blast of a damsel’s question.”

(Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 8 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1872), 496.)

But then after Christ rose and confronted Peter three times with the question, “Do you love me more than these?”, Peter did not rise in his pride as he did before. “His answer goes no further than, ‘Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee,’ without adding ‘more than these.’”

Or the way in which a sick man will not eat the best dinner, it is a sign he has no taste for the meal. “So when a man hath a temptation to sin, decked and garnished with all the allurements the devil can dress it with, and he hath no stomach to close with it, it is a sign of a mortified frame.”

Second, “When we meet with few interruptions in duties of worship.” How easily and often are we turned away from our duty to “lay fast hold on God.” When everything turns us away, it implies that we are taken by everything but God. He compares this to an army: does it stop us at every turn? Then it is a “well-bodied army.” But where the incidents are few, there are few soliders. 

The third point is the key: merely refraining from sin is not mortification – but when the thief no longer steals but now works so that he can give to others, that is evidence of mortification. As Charnock puts it, “When we bring forth the fruits of the contrary graces, it is a sign sin is mortified. It is to this end that sin is killed by the Spirit, that fruit may be brought forth to God; the more sweet and full fruit a tree bears, the more evidence there is of the weakness of those suckers which are about the root to hinder its generous productions.”

Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Mortification.3

06 Thursday Aug 2020

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“The second thing is, how we may judge of our mortification.”

Those things which are not true mortification. 

Merely reframing from some action: “All cessation from some particular sin is not a mortification. A non-commission of a particular sin is not an evidence of the mortification of the root of it. Indeed, a man cannot commit all kinds of sin at a time, nor in many years; the commands of sin are contrary, and many masters commanding contrary things cannot be served at one and the same time.”

One may give up only the outward display of the sin while maintaining the desire. Jesus explains that adultery and murder begin in the heart as unspoken lust and anger. They are still sin, even if not displayed. 

Or one may cease to commit some particular sin for a number of reasons. Sometimes a sin is not committed because there is simply no opportunity to commit the sin. I would be thief, if only there were something to steal. “The pollutions of the world may be escaped when the pollutions of the heart remain.”

Some sins we cannot commit because our body will not cooperate with the sin. (It was once explained to me that one reason for jail for violent crime is that kept a young man out of service until he became too old to engage in such crimes.) “A present sickness may make an epicure nauseate the dainties which he would before rake even in the sea to procure. There is a cessation from acts of sin, not out of a sense of sin, but a change of the temper of his body.”

Sometimes a flood of guilt or shame keeps one off from a particular sin for some time, but when the guilt subsides and the opportunity returns, so does the sin. 

And finally, one may just trade one sin for other. “A cessation from one sin may be but an exchange.” Certain sins are mutually exclusive: you cannot be profligate and a miser at the same time. 

Being prevented from engaging in a sin: “Restraints from sin are not mortification of it. Men may be curbed when they are not changed; and there is no man in the world but God doth restrain him from more sins, which he hath a nature to commit, than what he doth actually commit.”

Why is a restraint not mortification? Restraints do not get to the heart. 

“Mortification is always from an inward principle in the heart, restraints from an outward.” True mortification will not be merely refraining from some action, but also a desire to refrain. “In a renewed man, there is something beside bare considerations to withhold him, something of antipathy which heightens and improves those considerations, whereby the soul is glad of them, because the edge and dint of them is against sin.”

In true mortification, one does not refrain from the sin because it is too hard to commit; one refrains from the sin because there is a “hatred of sin”.  “[M]ortification proceeds from an anger, a desire of revenge.”

Sin is not the bare action: the law distinguished between an accidental killing a deliberate murder: the intent made the thing a sin. Thus, mortification is not merely the outward restraint but a change in the thought and affection, “Mortification is a voluntary, rational work of the soul; restraints are not so. The devil hath nothing of his nature altered, but hath as strong an inclination to sin as ever, though the act he intends is often hindered by God.”

Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Mortification.2

02 Sunday Aug 2020

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I. What mortification is.

Charnock begins with a definition of “mortification” (killing). He lists four aspects of mortification, breaking with sin, a declaration of hostility toward sin, resistance to sin, killing sin.

Breaking with sin. Charnock notes the strength which sin is said to hold over the human being. Sin is likened to a king with subjects, “Sin is therefore said to have dominion, to make laws, whence we read of the law of the members.” Sin is as close to the human being as flesh is to bone.  Therefore, there can be no end of sin’s work until one divorces sin. There must be “a stopping the ears against the importunities of it, and refusing all commerce and cohabitation with it.”

Hostility.  We cannot merely say that we are done and then be done with sin. If we break with sin we merely move to a state of war. Sin will either have its way with us, or we will need to be at war with sin:

And here behold that irreconcileable and tedious war, without a possibility of renewing the ancient friendship, and which ends not but with a total conquest of sin. This hostility begins in a bridling corrupt affections, laying a yoke upon anything that would take part with the enemy. It cuts off all the supplies of sin, stops all the avenues to it; which the apostle expresseth by ‘making provision for the flesh,’ Rom. 13:14, &c.; a turning the stream which fed sin another way 

Resistance: “A strong and powerful resistance, by using all the spiritual weapons against sin which the Christian armoury will afford.” Charnock makes an interesting observation by resting sin and movement to sin in disordered affections, “a bringing the affections into order, that they may not contradict and disobey the motions of the Spirit and sanctified reason.”

Killing: This comes from the meaning of the language of Paul. For instance, in Colossians 3:5, Paul uses the verb nekrosate: you put to death, kill, “to reduce to a carcase.”

Every day there is to be a driving a new nail into the body of death, a breaking some limb or other of it, till it doth expire.

Stephen Charnock, A Discourse on Mortification.1

28 Tuesday Jul 2020

Posted by in Mortification, Puritan, Stephen Charnock

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Charnock first introduces his text, Romans 8:13, “For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” He makes the point that, “You must not imagine you shall be justified without being sanctified.” There is a strange belief that (using an image from Dallas Willard) salvation is sort of like an arbitrary barcode slapped onto a product. The scanner reads the code and ignores the item. If a “soap” barcode is put on a box of cereal, the scanner reads “soap.” We believe that if we receive the barcode “saved” that will read by the scanner on judgment day, no matter who we are.

Charnock then defines “flesh” and “body”: “Some, by flesh, understand the state under the law; others, more properly, corrupted nature. Ye shall die, without hopes of a better life. But if you mortify the deeds of the body: the deeds of the body of sin, which is elsewhere called the body of death; the first motions to sin and passionate compliances with sin, which are the springs of corrupt actions. Corrupt nature is called a body here, morally, not physically; it consisting of divers vices, as a body of divers members.”

The verse consists of a threat and a promise; an act and an object. A great deal of Puritan precision is simply a matter of paying attention to the text. Exegesis is a matter of paying attention, asking questions and thinking. When people first hear someone carefully exegete a text is sounds like magic; when in fact it is merely carefully reading.

Charnock then makes a few deductions from the text. “Sin is active in the soul of an unregenerate man.” Second, “Nothing but the death of sin must content a renewed soul. The sentence is irreversible: die it must.” This is a present tense, continual action. 

“The knife must still stick in the throat of sin, till it fall down perfectly dead. Sin must be kept down though it will rage the more, as a beast with the pangs of death is more desperate.”

This rampage against sin must be universal, from all actions and intentions, from the first motion to the last completion.

“The greatest object of our revenge is within us. Our enemies are those of our own house, inbred, domestic adversaries; our anger is then a sanctified anger when set against our own sins. Our enemy has got possession of our souls, which makes the work more difficult.”

How then is this done?  “Man must be an agent in this work. We have brought this rebel into our souls, and God would have us make as it were some recompence by endeavouring to cast it out; as in the law, the father was to fling the first stone against a blasphemous son.”

And how, “Through the Spirit. (1.) Mortification is not the work of nature; it is a spiritual work. Every man ought to be an agent in it, yet not by his own strength.” 

And here a bit of summary, “The difficulty of this work is hereby declared. The difficulty is manifested by the necessity of the Spirit’s efficacy. Not all the powers on earth, nor the strength of ordinances, can do it; omnipotency must have the main share in the work.”

And from this the “doctrine”, the thesis statement: 

The doctrine to be hence insisted on is this: Mortification of sin is an universal duty, and the work of the Spirit in the soul of a believer, without which there can be no well-grounded expectations of eternal life and happiness.

Contemplating the Goodness of God

02 Saturday Mar 2019

Posted by in C.S. Lewis, Glory, Stephen Charnock

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Stephen Chanticleer explains that we impoverish our lives because we do not meditate up the goodness of God. He explains that such knowledge would transform what we desire

A sense of the Divine goodness would mount us above the world. It would damp our appetites after meaner things; we should look upon the world not as a God, but a gift from God, and never think the present better than the Donor. We should never lie soaking in muddy puddles were We always filled with a sense of the richness and clearness of this Fountain, wherein we might bathe ourselves; little petty particles of good would give us no content, when we were sensible of such an unbounded ocean. Infinite goodness, rightly apprehended, would dull our desires after other things, and sharpen them with a keener edge after that which is best of all. How earnestly do we long for the presence of a friend, of whose good will towards us we have full experience.

CS Lewis in The Weight of Glory explains that we were created to desire and seek such goodness

If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased

Spurgeon’s Preaching (Argumentation)

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Charles Spurgeon, Preaching, Stephen Charnock, Uncategorized

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Argumentation

In the Immutability of God, Spurgeon first speaks in great praise about the immutability of God. Rather than merely saying that this is something which should excite you, he speaks in such a way, using a combination of concrete imagery and a variety of rhetorical forms of repetition (for an excellent discussion of rhetoric, and these figures see http://rhetoric.byu.edu), “Repetition is a major rhetorical strategy for producing emphasis, clarity, amplification, or emotional effect.” (You will notice such repetition on occasion, but it is usually quite stilted in the mouth of preacher — you get the sort of feeling that he is wearing someone else’s clothes and he’s terribly afraid he’ll be found out.)

But having concluded with his praise of God’s immutability, Spurgeon now raises the implicit question — is this true:

 Thus having taken a great deal too much time, perhaps, in simply expanding the thought of an unchanging God, I will now try to prove that he is unchangeable, I am not much of an argumentative preacher, but one argument that I will mention is this: the very existence, and being of a God, seem to me to imply immutability. 

Here is his proposition: if there is a God, then such a God must be immutable. His argument here seems to derive from Charnock’s The Existence and Attributes of God, in the chapter “On the Immutability of God” (To be fair, his first section roughly tracks Charnock’s discussion of the subject. There is certainly nothing approaching copying between Spurgeon and Charnock — but rather Spurgeon makes good use of Charnock’s masterwork and turns into propositions which could be understood from a pulpit.)

His first argument is really no more complicated that it doesn’t even make sense to say one could be God and one could change — anymore than one could be a married bachelor. 

Or here is the second argument raised by Spurgeon:

Well, I think that one argument will be enough, but another good argument may be found in the fact of God’s perfection. I believe God to be a perfect being. Now, if he is a perfect being, he cannot change. Do you not see this? Suppose I am perfect to-day. If it were possible for me to change, should I be perfect tomorrow after the alteration? If I changed, I must either change from a good state to a better — and then if I could get better, I could not be perfect now-or else from a better state to a worse-and if I were worse, I should not be perfect then. If I am perfect, I cannot be altered without being imperfect. If I am perfect to-day, I must keep the same to-morrow if I am to be perfect then. So, if God is perfect, he must be the same- for change would imply imperfection now, or imperfection then.

He takes a very narrow idea: if something is perfect, it cannot be more perfect. If it could be more perfect then it wouldn’t be perfect now. This is the second argument raised by Charnock for the proof of God’s immutability, “If God were changeable, he could not be the most perfect Being.”  And lest anyone think that Spurgeon was merely cribbing from Charnock it is only fair to compare Spuregon’s summary with Charnock’s original

If God were changeable, he could not be the most perfect Being. God is the most perfect Being, and possesses in himself infinite and essential goodness (Matt, v, 48): “Your heavenly Father is perfect.” If he could change from that perfection, he were not the highest exemplar and copy for us to write after. If God doth change, it must be either to a greater perfection than he had before, or to a less, mutatio ‘perfectiva vel amissiva; if he changes to acquire a perfection he had not, then he was not before the most excellent Being; necessarily, he was not what he might be; there was a defect in him, and a privation of that which is better than what he had and was; and then he was not alway the best, and so was not alway God; and being not alway God, could never be God; for to begin to be God is against the notion of God; not to a less perfection than he had; that were to change to imperfection, and to lose a perfection which he possessed before, and cease to be the best Being; for he would lose some good which he had, and acquire some evil which he was free from before. so that the sovereign perfection of God is an invincible bar to any change in him; for which way soever you cast it for a change, his supreme excellency is impaired and nulled by it: for in all change there is something from which a thing is changed, and something to which it is changed; so that on the one part there is a loss of what it had, and on the other part there is an acquisition of what it had not. If to the better, he was not perfect, and so was not God; if to the worse, he will not be perfect, and so be no longer God after that change. If God be changed, his change must be voluntary or necessary; if voluntary, he then intends the change for the better, and chose it to acquire a perfection by it; the will must be carried out to anything under the notion of some goodness in that which it desires. Since good is the object of the desire and will of the creature, evil cannot be the object of the desire and will of the Creator. And if he should be changed for the worse, when he did really intend the better, it would speak a defect of wisdom, and a mistake of that for good which was evil and imperfect in itself; and if it be for the better, it must be a motion or change for something without himself; that which he desireth is not possessed by himself, but by some other. there is, then, some good without him and above him, which is the end in this change; for nothing acts but for some end, and that end is within itself or without itself; if the end for which God changes be without himself, then there is something better than himself: besides, if he were voluntarily changed for the better, why did he not change before? If it were for want of power, he had the imperfection of weakness; if for want of knowledge of what was the best good, he had the imperfection of wisdom, he was ignorant of his own happiness; if he had both wisdom to know it, and power to effect it, it must be for want of will; he then wanted that love to himself and his own glory, which is necessary in the Supreme Being. Voluntarily he could not be changed for the worse, he could not be such an enemy to his own glory; there is nothing but would hinder its own imperfection and becoming worse. Necessarily he could not be changed, for that necessity must arise from himself, and then the difficulties spoken of before will recur, or it must arise from another; he cannot be bettered by another, because nothing hath any good but what it hath received from the hands of his bounty, and that without loss to himself, nor made worse; if anything made him worse, it would be sin, but that cannot touch his essence or obscure his glory, but in the design and nature of the sin itself (Job xxxv. 6, 7): “If thou sinnest, what dost thou against him? or if thy transgressions be multiplied, what dost thou unto him? if thou be righteous, what givest thou him; or what receives he at thy hand?” He hath no addition by the service of man, no more than the sun hath of light by a multitude of torches kindled on the earth; nor any more impair by the sins of men, than the light of the sun hath by men’s shooting arrows against it.

Spurgeon’s summary and reworking of Charnock on this point demonstrates that Spurgeon had ingested Charnock, and understood the argument well enough to teach it. He didn’t merely read Charnock, he taught Charnock.

I am going to compare this simplicity in argumentation with the rigor and logic of Manton’s preaching.

Stephen Charnock: Can a bare thought without an action be a sin?

26 Friday Jan 2018

Posted by in Psychology, Stephen Charnock, Uncategorized

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Can a bare thought be evil?  Charnock in his essay The Sinfulness and Cure of Thoughts makes this observation:

First motions: those unfledged thoughts and single threads, before a multitude of them come to be twisted and woven into a discourse; such as skip up from our natural corruptions, and sink down again, as fish in a river. These are sins, though we consent not to them, because, though they are without our will, they are not against our nature, but spring from an inordinate frame, of a different hue from what God implanted in us. How can the first sprouts be good, if the root be evil? Not only the thought formed, but the very formation, or first imagination, is evil. Voluntariness is not necessary to the essence of a sin, though it be to the aggravation of it. It is not my will or knowledge which doth make an act sinful, but God’s prohibition. Lot’s incest was not ushered by any deliberate consent of his will, Gen. 19: 33, 35, yet who will deny it to be a sin, since he should have exercised a severer command over himself than to be overtaken with drunkenness, which was the occasion of it? Original sin is not effectivè voluntary, in infants, because no act of the will is exerted in an infant about it; yet it is voluntary subjectivè, because it doth inhærere voluntati. These motions may be said to be voluntary negatively, because the will doth not set bounds to them, and exercise that sovereign dominion over the operations of the soul which it ought to do, and wherewith it was at its first creation invested. Besides, though the will doth not immediately consent to them, yet it consents to the occasions which administer such motions, and therefore, according to the rule, that causa causæ est causa causati, they may be justly charged upon our score.

And:

 They [sinful thoughts] are contrary to the law, which doth forbid the first foamings and belchings of the heart, because they arise from an habitual corruption, and testify a defect of something which the law requires to be in us, to correct the excursions of our minds: Rom. 7: 7, ‘I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.’ Doth not the law oblige man as a rational creature? Shall it then leave that part, which doth constitute him rational, to fleeting and giddy fancies? No; it binds the soul as the principal agent, the body only as the instrument. For if it were given only for the sensitive part, without any respect to the rational, it would concern brutes as well as men, which are as capable of a rational command and a voluntary obedience, as man without the conduct of a rational soul. It exacts a conformity of the whole man to God, and prohibits a deformity, and therefore engageth chiefly the inward part, which is most the man. It must then extend to all the acts of the man, consequently to his thoughts, they being more the acts of the man than the motions of the body.

And:

We are accountable to God, and punishable for thoughts. Nothing is the meritorious cause of God’s wrath but sin. The text tells us, that they were once the keys which opened the flood-gates of divine vengeance, and broached both the upper and nether cisterns, to overflow the world. If they need a pardon— Acts 8: 22, ‘If perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee’—( as certainly they do), then, if mercy doth not pardon them, justice will condemn them. And it is absolutely said, Prov. 12: 2, ‘That a man of wicked devices,’ or thoughts, ‘God will condemn.’ It is God’s prerogative, often mentioned in Scripture, to ‘search the heart.’ To what purpose, if the acts of it did not fall under his censure, as well as his cognisance? He ‘weighs the spirits,’ Prov. 16: 2, in the balance of his sanctuary, and by the weights of his law, to sentence them, if they be found too light. The word doth discover and judge them: Heb. 4: 12, 13, ‘It divides asunder the soul and spirit,’ the sensitive part, the affections, and the rational, the understanding and will; both which it doth dissect, and open, and judge the acts of them, even the thoughts and intents, ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν, whatsoever is within theθυμὸς, and whatsoever is within theνοῦς, the one referring to the soul, the other to the spirit.

 

Is Eternal Life Temporary?

26 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in John, Stephen Charnock, Thomas Manton, Uncategorized

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(Got a question from one who heard that “eternal” means a very long time. Therefore, the “eternal life” offered by Jesus may only be a very long life which could end at some point in the future. This is the brief response I wrote)

God does not offer “eternal life” as a shadow or a trick or some temporary thing. God holds eternal life up as one thing so valuable that it is worth losing our life to gain this eternal life. It is better to be hated, abused and murdered and gain this eternal life, than it is to have every good thing which could be had in this world.

The fact that God offers it to us, should give us comfort. If God offered a life which might run out, then it would disturb our peace:

It is an endless and everlasting life. Such as are once possessed of it shall never be dispossessed again. If man be designed to enjoy a chief good, and this chief good must content all our desires, it must also be so firm and absolutely immutable as to secure us against all our fears; for a fear of losing would disquiet our minds, and so hinder our blessedness.

Thomas Manton, The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, vol. 11 (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1873), 366. God has not offered a very long life as our supreme good. God has offered us a life which is both never-ending, but also which belongs to a differ age, the age to come. Both of those things should give us comfort.

First, when we speak of “eternity” and God, we must out of our heads the idea that “eternity” is a very, very long time. This is hard for us to do, because we only have only experienced time in this way.  In Romans 8:20, Paul explains that the creation – the entire universe that we could know – “was subjected to futility”, it is vain, it is running down (Eccl. 1:2, Gen. 3:19).

This matches what we know about the universe from observing it. Physicists talk about “Time’s Arrow”: the universe is running in one direction, and it is running down (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time).  So when we talk about “time”, we think of a succession of moments and an increase in entropy.

Stephen Charnock in The Existence and Attributes of God writes

We must conceive of eternity contrary to the notion of time; as the nature of time consists in succession of parts, so the nature of eternity in an infinite immutable duration. Eternity and time differ as the sea and the rivers; the sea never changes place, and is always one water; but the rivers glide along, and are swallowed up in the sea; so it is time by eternity.

There is a great deal of discussion and speculation when it comes to what eternity actually means. Eternity – and infinity —  are very strange and very hard concepts. God is called the “everlasting” or “eternal” God (Rom. 16:26), he is the eternal king (1 Tim. 1:17). That is why in Revelation we read that God was, is and is to come (Rev. 1:8, 11:17).

When we start to think of concepts like “eternal life” (John 3:16), we have to realize that when it comes to divine things, we are not speaking about very long things.

It is true that sometimes the words translated “eternal” or “everlasting” sometimes have the idea of very long, or indefinite, or “age”, or “aeon”. That, however, should not trouble us. When we speak to one-another we often talk about something “taking forever”, when we mean 20 minutes.  We will say that it was “an eternity”.

But we can also use the word “forever” and understand it to mean something which cannot end. When we use the word “forever” or the word “eternity” we can tell what we mean – and we expect other people to be able to understand us easily. We do this, because can understand the context and the use. We understand that sometimes a word is being used ironically, or emphatically. So if I tell my wife, I will love you forever, I mean to underscore the intensity of my commitment: even though we both know that neither of us will literally live forever.

The same thing applies to uses in the Scripture – the Bible is written in ordinary language. So in Genesis 9:16, God makes “an everlasting covenant” to never flood the earth again. But we also know that God will one day re-create the entire universe (2 Pet. 3:7).  Therefore, we know that this covenant to never flood the earth will hold true throughout the duration of the earth’s existence, but the covenant does not mean that God will keep the earth in existence forever.

Or in Genesis 17:8, God promises Canaan as an “everlasting possession” – we quickly see the problem of simply using the word without consideration (even if we decided we would think about it forever).

So, in some places the word aion/aionios means a long time ago: Luke 1:70, As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old (aion).

In context we can tell it cannot mean “forever” – that would result in nonsense.

By contrast, in 2 Corinthian 9:9, we read that God’s righteousness endures forever. We can’t say that God’s righteous will last a long time and then wear out.  Or God’s throne is “forever”. (Heb. 1:8). If God’s throne is not going to last, God is not much of a God.

What I want you to see here is that you cannot fear that our promised eternal life will wear out in the distant future merely because the word “aion” could mean a very long time.  Our word “forever” can mean “a long time”. The way in which a word could be used does not tell me how it is being used.

Second, when it comes to eternity and God, our normal concepts of time simply do not apply.

 How then is the word “eternity” used when it comes to our “eternal life”?

It would make very little sense to say that you will live “forever” and it to be only a very long time. Life is something which one either has or does not. If life is everlasting, the word “everlasting” or “eternal” would not be ironic/hyperbole (“it took forever to get home”).

It could be emphatic: and there is a sense in which it is. It does not merely mean continual and without end: it means life which belongs to another age: thus the language life of the Age, or Aeon would point toward not merely a long life, but a life which belongs to the age to come, to “eternity”.

But perhaps the most important aspect is that the idea of “eternal” life is contrasted with death.  Consider John 6:51 & 58. In this passage, Jesus is contrasting the bread eaten in the wilderness (manna) which himself as the bread of life. Jesus notes that the fathers ate manna and died (“Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and died” John 6:49).  Yet the one who eats Christ “will live forever” (John 6:50). He repeats the same idea in John 6:58: they ate and died, but “he who east his bread [Christ] will live forever”. If Jesus is merely offering an extremely long life, this argument fails.  Jesus’ offer is something that cannot end, or his argument is a lie.

This argument is stronger when you consider the other concepts and images which are used to complement the idea of “eternal life” in John 3:

That is the immediate result of the love of God for the world: the mission of the Son. His ultimate purpose is the salvation of those in the world who believe in him (eis auton, not en autō as in v. 15). Whoever believes in him experiences new birth (3:3, 5), has eternal life (3:15, 16), is saved (3:17); the alternative is to perish (cf. also 10:28), to lose one’s life (12:25), to be doomed to destruction (17:12, cognate with ‘to perish’). There is no third option.

A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 206. Eternal life runs parallel to born again. We cannot be “unborn”, therefore, by analogy we do not un-live.

Second, the contrast is made to death and destruction. If we will die, then the offer of “eternal life” makes no sense if “eternal” only means very long time.

 

 

Questions about a fly

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Apologetics, Stephen Charnock

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Charnock notes that we should not expect anyone to know God in any reasonable way.

How can we arise by the strength of nature to the underling of the infinite wisdom and power? If we are not able to arrive to such a knowledge of the creatures by weak nature [or inherent ability to observe and understand the world], so as to given an essential definition [a complete description] of them; if the nature of a stone, sound, col, do pose us [and if you take the time you will learn that the most basic questions are profoundly more difficult than we ever believed; all investigation has only made the basic questions more difficult]: if all the question put to us about a fly cannot be answered: how much less are we able to come to the knowledge of God, with strength with the strange which is too weak for the other? If we are nonplussed by creatures, much more by the Creator.

The Knowledge of God in Christ

Ten Ways The Creation Gives Knowledge of God

30 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Creation, Glory, Romans, Stephen Charnock

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From Stephen Charnock’s The Knowledge of God in Christ

First, creation evidences the power of God, “in bringing forth a fair world out of nothing, which manifests an infinite strength”. Before you run past that point, consider that all things from no-thing does require an infinite addition of power.

Second, creation evidences wisdom: “in the order, variety, and beauty; in the great resemblances or reason in some little creatures, as in ants and bees ….”

Third, creation evidences the goodness of God: the life of so many animals and plants, so much beauty — even joy. That the universe should lack any of these things is no surprise; that we should have things is the mystery.

Fourth, the immutability of God: creatures show their imperfection in their mutuality; the Creator lacks all imperfection.

Fifth, “eternity, which is inseparable from infinite power.”

Sixth, omniscience as the Creator who sustains all things.

Seventh, sovereignty,  the creatures are obedient in that they each keep to their places and orders, “moving in the spheres wherein he set them.”

Eighth, the spirituality of God.

Ninth, “the sufficiency of God for himself. Since all creatures had a beginning, God no need creating them.”

Tenth, majesty: particularly as set forth in the celestial bodies.

While Charnock treats these matters briefly here, he discusses them at length in The Existence and Attributes of God.