Theology – Iron Ink

WOKE Has Given Us Gender Neutral “Theybies” …. Baptists Have Long Given Us Religious Neutral Babies

“Theybies” (Rhymes with Babies)

Theybies are babies that are being raised in a gender-neutral environment to defend against gender socialization. The purpose of this parenting strategy is to not push children into gender stereotypes or roles and let them choose what to become.

This is merely Baptist thinking continuing on into gender. I mean compare Baptist reasoning to “Theybie” reasoning,

Baptists are those who raise babies in a covenant-neutral environment to defend against their children being raised with the conviction that they are Christian. The purpose of this covenant-less strategy is to not push children into a covenant commitment so to let them choose what to become in terms of their religion.

Dabney – You Become What You Worship

“Rome’s saint and angel worship is but baptized paganism, and like all other, it tends to degrade the worshipers. Hence, the importance of the prohibition of idolatry. Nothing but infinite perfection should be the object of religious worship. The reverence and admiration which worship implies invest every quality of the object worshiped with sanctity. Blemishes are always reproduced in the votaries. The worship of an imperfect object is therefore the deification of defects. Rom. 1:25, 26; Ps. 115:8. But the more the worshiper is corrupted, the more degraded will be the divinities which he will construct for himself out of his defiled heart, until the vile descent is realized which St. Paul describes in Rom. 1:22, 23.”

R. L. Dabney
Ch 31 In Dabney’s Systematic Theology

You become what you worship and you worship what you have become.

1.) All of is explanation of why it is of first importance to think well upon and about God. Nobody worships a God that they have not already understood to one degree or another. Doxology presupposes theology. Worship presupposes epistemology. If that isn’t true worshipers are left worshiping an “unknown god” which is still a god known enough to know that while unknown, he must be worshiped.

Do you want to be excellent parents to your children? Then make sure they think long, hard, and well about the God of the Bible. Make sure they learn not only who God is but also see that they learn what the concrete implications are to knowing God. If you want to measure your children’s behavior (or your own) then every time you see misbehavior, ask yourself, “what is it that my child is wrongly thinking and believing about God that is driving that behavior.” After all,

“As a man thinketh in his heart so he is.”

Proverbs 23:7

2.) Worship takes the knowledge of God and hones it to a razor-sharp reality. When we worship, we are grinding even deeper into our character and personality what it is we believe about the God we serve.

“Those who make them (idols) become like them, and so do all who trust in them.” Psalm 115:8

This means that if you show me the person, I will tell you about their God.

3.) This idea then flips into cultural considerations. If it is the case that showing me the person allows me insights into the God, they worship then it is also the case that showing me any given culture or subculture allows me insights into the God that culture is reflecting. Culture is, after all, only theology externalized as poured over particular people groups.

4.) Note Dabney’s statement, “blemishes are always reproduced in the votaries.” If any individual, family, church, or culture thinks wrongly about God that blemished thinking will out. Again, this is why we must spend our whole lives checking and re-checking how it is we think about God and what we think about God.

5.) All of this reinforces the idea that theology remains the Queen of the Sciences. What we believe and then worship gets into every other thing we do. What we believe and then worship gets into everything we say, our mannerisms, our priorities, and our relationships. Indeed our whole lives are nothing but lived out theology.

6.) Nobody gets a pass here. Even the Atheist who claims there is no God is animated by what he thinks about the god he denies exists.

7.) When one has a particular culture or people group who become divided amongst themselves on the character and nature of God (as the Wests currently is) the results are explosive. No people can exist as a people without a harmony of conviction on the nature and character of God. Now, those kinds of culture may not articulate their disagreements in quite that way but the fact is that their ownership of different cosmologies as driven by their differences in theology proper accounts for the divisiveness that exists in the culture. Such differences account for what we today call “culture wars.” Where there is no harmony of thought regarding theology there one can eventually expect blood in the streets because two or more gods can never co-exist in the same family, church, or culture.

8.) Of course, if one will not worship and serve the God of the Bible the only other option left is the worship of the creature and that in turn means either anarchy as each man does what is right in his own eyes or it means the tyrannical State, Church, or family as some covenantal hierarchy will seek to take the place as God walking on the earth. If man will not have God, then man will have man as God and man will get man as God, good and hard.

9.) This quote then emphasizes that we worship well. We should think long and hard about what our worship is communicating. Is our worship reflecting the character of the Triune Holy God?

Allow me to suggest that most of the modern Worship in the contemporary West is absolute trash. The sense of majesty is completely gone. The idea that we are meeting with the thrice Holy God has disappeared. The Gospel absolution in the liturgy (if it even exists in a worship service) is not thirsted for any longer because men no longer are convinced how benevolent and gracious God is in taking us for Himself as redeemed sinners in Jesus Christ as wooed by the Holy Spirit.

Our worship today in Protestant churches (exceptions notwithstanding) is just as bad as what Dabney was complaining about in the churches of Rome during His time. (Rome continues to suck as to this issue.)

Failure in Baptist Thinking

The baptism of infants, no doubt, presupposes that salvation is altogether of the Lord. No infant can be the Lord’s unless it is the Lord who makes him such. If salvation waits on anything we can do, no infant can be saved; for there is nothing that an infant can do. In that case no infant can have a right to the sign and seal of salvation. But infants in this do not differ in any way from adults; of all alike it is true that it is only “of God” that they are in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul in arguing out the doctrine of signs and seals, was to show once for all from the typical case of Abraham that salvation is always a pure gratuity from God, and signs and seals do not precede it as its procuring cause or condition, but follow it as God’s witness to its existence and promise to sustain it. Every time we baptize an infant we bear witness that salvation is from God, that we cannot do any good thing to secure it, that we receive it from his hands as a sheer gift of his grace, and that we all enter the Kingdom of heaven therefore as little children, who do not do, but are done for.

B.B. Warfield

Because baptism now replaces circumcision, it follows that every Christian who neglects to have his own children baptized in infancy, cuts them off from himself and from the people of God. What an awesome sin of omission, then, is committed by some of our dear Christian brethren who refuse baptism to their own little infants and thus despise the sacrament of the saving grace of God!

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee

In the old covenant the first fruits belong to the Lord. The believer’s income belongs to the Lord. The believer’s children belong to the Lord. The meaning behind covenant is that we are God’s possession. Baptism is the New Testament covenantal seal, and sign that was the mark of God’s ownership placed upon every newborn child in the household. This is standard covenant theology. In the Old covenant the children went with the parents and the male child was marked as God’s property by circumcision. In the New covenant, which is more expansive, every child is proclaimed to be owned by God (God’s property) by the placing of the sign of the covenant upon the child.

The Baptists make hash out of the idea of a “new and better covenant” by insisting that while in the old and worse covenant children were included in the covenant community but now those children of believers are not in a covenant that is referred to as “new and better.”

The idea of being God’s property is the meaning of the sign of the covenant, and baptism is a covenant rite. When we fail to baptize our children we are proclaiming either that our children are NOT God’s possession or we are proclaiming that our children might not be NOT God’s possession until they decide first. However, by emphasizing that our children have to be able to make a decision for Christ before the Spirit of Christ is able to make a decision claiming our children sets the meaning of a completely gratuitous redemption completely on its head as Warfield notes in the opening quote. Reformed Baptists not bringing their infants for Baptism gives the contradiction between the idea of “Reformed,” and “Baptist.” In the words of Big Bird on Sesame Street, “One of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you name which one?”

When we present our children for Baptism one hymn we might sing would go like this:

We give thee but thy own
Ordained by thy decree

The gift was given by thee alone
Your favor now we plea

And having now blessed us

We pour on them thy sign

And place in you our trust

For their lives as your design

Baptism is, above all else, the sign of the covenant. Being in covenant is the recognition that we and our children, our income and our possessions are the Lord’s. We are his possession and his property. If it is the case that we, the parents, are the Lord’s property then it only stands to reason that any children we have are the property of the Lord’s as well and so should be given the sign (Baptism) that is God’s brand that signifies His property.

To neglect to give the sign of the covenant to our children is an act of treason against God’s ownership. It is saying … “You may own us God but we will not obey you and give our children the mark that proclaims your ownership of your children.”

Baptists must repent but they need to be reminded that God delights in the repenting of His people. Embrace the Reformed … hold the Baptist.

The Well-Intentioned Offer vs. God Commands All Men Everywhere to Repent

Max writes,

The gospel offer is not grounded in Christ dying for each person individually. Scripture grounds the offer in God’s command and God’s promise.

God commands all people everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30). And He promises that whoever comes to Christ will be saved (John 6:37). That universal command and universal promise is the universal offer.

Bret responds,

Clearly Max you don’t understand the difference between a command and an offer. That God commands all men everywhere to repent is not the same as saying “God offers all men everywhere salvation.” The former is a true statement. The latter is not a true statement. God does NOT offer the reprobate salvation.

Max writes,

The offer is not: “Believe and then Christ will die for you.”
And it’s not: “Christ died for you in particular, therefore believe.”

Bret responds,

That’s correct, but only because the Gospel does not come with any offer at all.

Max writes,

The offer is: “Come to Christ, and you will find a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement that actually saves everyone who comes.”

Bret responds,

That is not an offer. An offer says, “Christ offers to you salvation if you will have it.” What you have above Max is a tautology. Of course, people who come to Christ find a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement that actually saves because the only people who come to Christ come because of a real, finished, all‑sufficient atonement actually saved.

Max writes,

Christ’s death is of infinite worth — fully sufficient to save every sinner on earth. The question of for whom He intended His death is a different category from the question of to whom God commands and promises salvation. Scripture keeps those categories distinct, and I’m trying to honor that distinction.

Bret

Logic also keeps the idea of “offer” distinct from the idea of “command.” You keep saying offer and then you explain “offer” as if it means “command.”

Christ commands all men everywhere to repent but He could not possibly give a well-intentioned offer to all men everywhere to repent since that would involve Him in the contradiction that He dies only for the elect, but He offers His salvation to those who were never elect and for whom He did not die for (i.e. – The reprobate).

Max writes

So the offer isn’t an empty box. The gift is Christ Himself — a real Savior with a real atonement that actually saves all who come to Him.

Bret responds

The offer is an empty box for the reprobate because there is no way it can be well-intentioned.

You don’t actually believe that man’s coming to Christ is the trigger event that effectuates Christ’s death for them do you Max?

Maybe instead it is the case that people come to Christ because they were saved at and in the Cross? Maybe that’s the reason why they hear the command (not offer) to repent and have faith?

Christ As the Suffering Servant

37. Q. What do you confess when you say that he suffered?

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1 Thus, by his suffering, as the only atoning sacrifice,2 he has redeemed our body and soul from everlasting damnation,3 and obtained for us the grace of God, righteousness, and eternal life.4

1 Is 53; 1 Tim 2:6; 1 Pet 2:24; 3:18. 2 Rom 3:25; 1 Cor 5:7; Eph 5:2; Heb 10:14; 1 Jn 2:2; 4:10. 3 Rom 8:1-4; Gal 3:13; Col 1:13; Heb 9:12; 1 Pet 1:18, 19. 4 Jn 3:16; Rom 3:24-26; 2 Cor 5:21; Heb 9:15.

It is during Lent that we find ourselves concentrating on those truths of Christianity that if they are brought up at all are brought up in a light and tertiary manner as if they are secondary issues. Huge Churches are built on the basis of not touching the issues that surround Lent. However, as we learn it is these subjects that often are at the heart of the Christian religion. We have taken up a couple of those truths the last two weeks. We looked at the subject of Repentance and the necessity, that because we are creatures, and because we are never completely free from the effects of Adam’s fall, our leaning into life should be characterized by repentance. We noted that because we always fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness in all that we think, do or say, our lives should be characterized as one of repentance.

Last week we considered the Lenten theme of humility. We said that if pride is the mother lode of all other sin then humility is the Round-up that kills pride. We spent some time considering the plethora of Scripture that reminds Christians over and over that God resists the proud by gives grace to the humble…. to the Scriptures that teach we are to clothe ourselves with humility. We insisted that it is only the Christian who ever pursues humility since the non-Christian, by definition, lives with self at the center of his whole existence. We insisted, that like repentance, the Christian life is one of constantly pulling the weed of self.

Most importantly, we noted that the Cross is at the center of repentance and humility. If we are to learn repentance and humility we must be students of the Cross. The Cross exposes our need for repentance reminding us of God’s righteous and holy standard by which sin is judged. If the price of sin was the Cross and if we grow in that understanding, then sorrow for our sin that issues in repentance is the hum of our lives.

Our repentance doesn’t improve our standing with God, but it reflects a growing gratitude for the Cross, and this gratitude demonstrates itself by a lifestyle of repentance and ever-growing obedience.

When we learn the Cross, we also learn humility. It is impossible to carry a proud and haughty mien when we consider the humility that Christ suffered. The Cross teaches that there Christ paid for all our pride, and the Spirit poured out because of the Cross works in God’s people to put to ever increasingly put to death pride, selfishness, and the desire to live with ourselves at the center.

This week we take up the subject of suffering. This is another motif of Lent along with Repentance and humility. This week we will take up the suffering of Christ and next week we will consider the call to our own suffering.

During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ suffered bearing the Wrath of God.

Here we find some surprised that it could be said that Christ suffered during all the time he lived on earth, thinking that the only suffering of Christ would have been restricted to when He entered into His passion … perhaps starting at Gethsemane and continuing on through the Cross. The Catechism teaches here that thinking is not accurate.

Here our Christian theologians introduce the distinction between Christ’s active and passive obedience. Here is a distinction that seeks to not isolate the whole of Christ’s obedience one aspect from another, but rather seeks to give us handles to better understand the suffering of Christ.

When we talk about the active obedience of Christ we mean the obedience Christ offered up during life with regard to His perfect obedience to the requirements of God’s Law. When we speak of the passive obedience of Christ we are referring to the fact that Christ, in spite of His perfect obedience to the Law during His life, Christ received the due penalty for God’s law having been violated.

Now, it is easier to think of Christ’s suffering under the distinction of His passive obedience whereby Christ suffers vicariously in our place for our sins. On the Cross Christ suffers the wrath of God as a sin offering, suffering as our substitute for the sin of the elect. The suffering in his passive obedience is not a suffering He deserves in Himself but a suffering He is required to meet as our representative – as in our place.

This passive substitutionary obedience and suffering is clearly taught in passages like,

For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. II Cor. 5:21

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. I Pt. 3:18

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.” Gal. 3:13

So, it is easy enough, to trace the suffering of Christ in relation to His passive obedience … In and through His passive obedience Christ suffers the just penalty of the wrath of God against Sin. In His passive obedience Christ on the Cross is the representative sinner vicariously suffering for the sins of the elect.

But now we pause to ask if the Catechism is correct by teaching that Christ suffered during all the time on earth? Scripture here points us in a direction that confirms the Catechism’s teaching when Isaiah writes;

He is despised and rejected by men,
A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. (Is. 53:3)

The Scripture teaches here that Christ suffered as despised and rejected. Christ is characterized as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief and for anybody who has knows even a wee bit of sorrows and grief, certainly we understand the suffering of that.

Jesus Himself speaks of His suffering when He teaches;

If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me first. / If you were of the world, it would love you as its own. Instead, the world hates you, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. / Remember the word that I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you as well; if they kept My word, they will keep yours as well.

Here again is that idea of the suffering Messiah. Who would gainsay that universal hatred is indeed suffering – especially when that hatred is completely unjust? Yet, here is Christ testifying to His own suffering… His own persecution.

Now, the Catechism does teach that His suffering was especially at the end but the suffering at the end was of a piece with all the suffering the Lord Christ underwent during His whole life.

So, when we think of the active obedience of Christ wherein He fulfills all the demands of the law in our place we also think of the suffering of our Lord Christ. We are reminded that this suffering in His active obedience was a suffering that was redemptive – that is to say it is suffering in our place and for us. It remains a vicarious suffering.

We are reminded then of the suffering Messiah. We see His suffering as He lived His life in a world that was in unremitting rebellion against His Father. We see His suffering in His tears over the death of His friend Lazarus and in the lament we find Him anguishing over the refusal of Jerusalem to repent. These could not be isolated moments of suffering. Our Lord Christ healed the sick, delivered the possessed, raised the dead but in the doing of all that would He not have suffered seeing the weight of sin’s curse and its effect on creation?

In teasing this out … the suffering found in both the active and passive obedience of Christ we learn that the Catechism is Scripturally correct in putting in our mouths and in our memories the truth that;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against sin”

The Hymn writers teach us the same;

Man of Sorrows
What a name
For the Son of God who came
Ruined sinners to reclaim
Hallelujah, what a Savior

There is something else going on here in the Catechism as it reflects Scripture that is going on here. In the Catechism’s question and answer with its emphasis on the suffering of the Lord Christ is pointing us towards the fact that the Christian faith is definitionally cruciform. By this I mean that the Catechism, when it teaches us about Christ’s suffering, in it’s relating that suffering to Christ and His being the sin-bearer.

There is a subtle point I want us to see here. It is subtle but vitally important all the same. By connecting Christ’s suffering as being related to bearing God’s wrath against sin the Catechizers, following Scripture, teaches us that the heart of the Christian faith is Christus pro me – Christ for me…. or in the corporate … “Christ for us.”

The Christian life though it is definitionally inclusive of “following Christ,” does not find its beating heart in a definition that Christianity means following Jesus.

I bring this out because I heard Tucker Carlson, say this week;

“A Christian is one who follows Jesus.”

Tucker Carlson

We give Carlson some latitude because he is young in the Christian faith. However, this is not the heart of what it means to be a Christian. No … this is the liberal definition of Christian. Liberals are forever asking “What would Jesus Do.” It is the Biblical Christian who promotes instead as the main question; “What did Jesus do.” And the answer to that question is the Gospel … is the primary definition of Christianity. What Jesus did is in the incarnation he added a Human nature, with the purpose of obeying all God’s law perfectly vicariously (in the place of) His people as conjoined with the purpose of suffering the just penalty of God’s wrath against both our sin nature and all our sinful acts that flow from that sin nature.

The proper definition of Christian is one who owns the sacrifice and suffering of Jesus Christ for their sins. That needs be the first thing that is said when someone asks “what is a Christian.” A Christian is someone who confesses;

A. During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.1

Now, let us begin our descent in landing this morning by noting the whole theme of Christ’s suffering being substitutionary. I haven’t used that word yet in this morning though I have frequently used the words “vicarious” and “vicariously.” This is a word, like propitiation, that we seldom use anymore in our communication. As Christians though it needs to be in our vocabulary because it is at the heart of our Christian faith.

Vicarious communicates the idea of substitution and so, vicarious suffering refers to the concept of enduring pain or hardship on behalf of others.

We have heard already the verses that teach that Christ suffered in our place, in our stead, on our behalf, in our place … or simply for us.

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, I Peter 3:18

And again,

so also Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and He will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who eagerly await Him. Hebrew 9:28

Here we are required to bring out the truth that Christ suffers as our representative. He suffers the suffering and death that we deserved. The wrath of God against the Messiah is not a wrath against His person. Scripture gives us the voice of the Father saying twice; “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

So, the suffering of Christ explained as the wrath of God is not against The Lord Jesus Christ in and of Himself. The suffering of Christ is explained by the fact that Christ is in our place. He suffers the suffering that was ours to suffer. He suffers as our Federal Head. All the deserved suffering of the elect in His redeemed church Christ suffers in our stead. He suffers the wrath of God so that we have peace with God.

This explains why every Christian minister of every generation commands all men everywhere to repent. If they will not own this suffering of Christ in their place … if they will not see the love of the Father and Son in His suffering vicariously then the terrible eternal wrath of God remains upon them. Oh, why will you suffer God’s eternal judgment? Why will you continue stiff necked and unrepentant? Why will you curse humility and continue to walk in pride?

So vicarious is the idea of substitution … Christ vicariously suffered in our place, on our behalf, for us. This is the beating heart of our undoubted Christian faith and during a Biblical Lent it is the theme that we are drawn back to over and over again.

And it is this Reformed theme that makes Lent different from the Lent of Rome. By learning the Cross we understand that Christ’s suffering requires no improvement on our part. Our repenting during Lent, our clothing ourselves with humility during Lent, our suffering during Lent are done out of a pursuit for an unsure redemption … a wrestling with God to gain a still uncertain salvation. Our repenting, clothing ourselves with humility, our suffering during Lent is in gratitude for the certainty of the salvation that could not be improved upon because of Christ’s humility and suffering in our place.

Now, there is just one more loose strand to clarify before we close and that is the language used by the catechism can easily confuse some folks. It is this phrase I refer to;

“During all the time he lived on earth, but especially at the end, Christ bore in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.”

Now, we have learned this morning about the vicarious nature of all this. We have labored to demonstrate the suffering that was found both in Christ’s active and passive obedience. Now we want to clean up that little phrase “the whole human race.”

People will and do easily walk away from this thinking that Christ suffered and died for each and every person who has ever lived. We want to draw out that is not the intent of the Catechizers.

First of all, we note that the Catechism has taught us that we are redeemed by this vicarious suffering of Christ. Now, if we take that idea and marry it to the idea of Christ bearing the wrath of God against the whole human race we would have to conclude that the writers of the Catechism were Universalist. If Christ suffered for the whole human race in the sense of every man who has ever lived than every man who has ever lived would be redeemed. This is Universalism.

The catechism nowhere else teaches this idea.

Now, some will insist that Christ suffered for the sin of every single man but every single man, they will say, has to have faith in Christ and if they don’t have faith in Christ then they will die in their sins. The problem here is found in the fact that a lack of faith is sin and if Christ suffered for the sins of every single person who has ever lived then His suffering paid for the sin that is found in a lack of faith.

So, unless we believe that the Catechism is teaching Universalism we cannot believe that it is teaching that Christ died either literally for each and every person who has ever lived or even hypothetically for each and every person who has ever lived. Saying Christ bore the wrath of God for the whole human race proves too much.

The resolution to this is to understand that the death of Christ is sufficient for the whole human race … that is, that the death of Christ is not lacking in any degree

The Canons of Dordt teach this;

The death of the Son of God is the only and most perfect sacrifice and satisfaction for sin, and is of infinite worth and value, abundantly sufficient to expiate the sins of the whole world.

The Canons of Dordt also teaches the particularity of Christ’s death;

For this was the sovereign counsel and most gracious will and purpose of God the Father that the quickening and saving efficacy of the most precious death of His Son should extend to all the elect, for bestowing upon them alone the gift of justifying faith, thereby to bring them infallibly to salvation; that is, it was the will of God that Christ by the blood of the cross, whereby He confirmed the new covenant, should effectually redeem out of every people, tribe, nation, and language, all those, and those only, who were from eternity chosen to salvation and given to Him by the Father; that He should confer upon them faith, which, together with all the other saving gifts of the Holy Spirit, He purchased for them by His death; should purge them from all sin, both original and actual, whether committed before or after believing; and having faithfully preserved them even to the end, should at last bring them, free from every spot and blemish, to the enjoyment of glory in His own presence forever.